How to install NAV 2018?

03/12/201703/12/2017 atotovic Microsoft Dynamics NAV Dynamics, Extensions, installation, Microsoft, Microsoft Dynamics NAV, NAV, NAV 2018, PowerShell, SQL 2017, Visual Studio Code, VS Code

OK, two days ago NAV 2018 has been released and I hope all of you were already downloaded this new version. Installation process is still very easy, but I want to show just few points where you need to take care.

When you run setup and try to customize your installation, you will see now one more thing here – Modern Development Environment (by default this is enabled, but just check it). If you don’t want to work with extensions, you don’t need it, but I hope you will develop only with extensions in this version.

After that, just keep eyes opened on the next step, when you need to specify parameters. OK, if you don’t do it, you can do it later. But anyway, I think it is much easier to do when you install NAV. This is related again with Modern Development Environment, and this time it is not enabled by default. You need to change Developer Service Enabled option to YES and to choose Developer Services Port. After that, everything is the same as in previous NAV versions.

But if you didn’t finish previous step during installation process, you just need to run NAV Administration tool and add Port on Development tab and to restart service.

Or you can do it using PowerShell if you prefer with the following cmdlet (do not forget to restart service after changing):

Set-NAVServerConfiguration <InstanceName> -KeyName 'DeveloperServicesPort' -KeyValue <PortNumber>

Now, you are ready to work with NAV 2018 and to make your first extension.

And just to mention, you can find System Requirements for Dynamics NAV 2018 here. But I tried to install NAV on SQL 2017 although there is noticed that NAV 2018 is available on SQL 2016 and SQL 2014 (and Azure SQL as well). However, I installed it on SQL 2017 and it works. I’ll check it with more details, and if I find something, I’ll publish it.

Translation in Extensions in NAV / D365 Tenerife

08/11/2017 atotovic Dynamics 365, Microsoft Dynamics NAV Development, Dynamics 365 tenerife, Environment, Extensions, localization, Microsoft, NAV, NAV 2018, Preview, translation, update, Visual Studio Code, VS Code

Today is announced November Update for new NAV Development Environment. There a lot of good things in this preview, but by my opinion one thing stands out. Maybe I think so, because I’m from countries where Microsoft doesn’t prepare official localization, and because of that partners need to do it by them self.

Anyway, from this update, it is possible to add translation to Extensions. This is the first step in providing localization via extensions. I don’t want to say that everything else is simplify, but this was necessary feature to do it. OK, translation will not be made as before, and now we need to accept different approach, but feature is here.

I don’t want to write about this and other features in detail, because this is already published on Microsoft official blog and you can read there.

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.

In-Client Designer in Dynamics NAV – June Update

23/06/2017 atotovic Dynamics 365, Microsoft Dynamics NAV Dynamics, Dynamics 365, extension, In-client Designer, Microsoft Dynamics NAV, NAV, NAV Tenerife, Tenerife, VM, VS Code

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.

In-Client Designer in Dynamics NAV

22/06/2017 atotovic Dynamics 365, Microsoft Dynamics NAV Azure, D365, developer, Dynamics, In-client Designer, Microsoft, Microsoft Dynamics NAV, NAV, NAV Tenerife, Preview, Tenerife, VM, VS Code

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.