Microsoft have been getting a great amount of media coverage recently, with announcements about Windows 8, Windows Phone 8, Surface, Office 2013. In addition to this, outside of the mainstream media and within the business circles, they have announced new versions of Windows Server, SQL Server, and Dynamics NAV (formally Navision).
It’s Dynamics NAV 2013 that I want to focus on in this post. This is the software release that has got me the most excited, most probably because my day to day work involves me delivering solutions based on Dynamics NAV. In fact if you speak to most people in the Dynamics world, they are all getting excited about Dynamics NAV 2013. The main reason is due to the shift in the technologies that work hand in hand with NAV 2013. Some of these technologies were there in NAV 2009 in one shape or another, but that was just a stepping stone towards NAV 2013.
For this post I’m going to highlight what I feel are the top 4 new features (some may be classed as improvements on existing features) in Dynamics NAV 2013.
Firstly the SharePoint client allows you to add a NAV page as a SharePoint part. It’s not widely known, but you could do this in NAV 2009. It just didn’t work very well and required you to jump through several hoops to get it to run. Now though, it just works. No extra installs or complicated configuration needed. Just add a new part to the required page in SharePoint and it all just works great. What’s even slicker is that when you click on something in the part, a Microsoft Dynamics NAV ribbon appears at the top of the page in the SharePoint ribbon.
Additionally, you can create a SharePoint page that contains various different parts. Each part might be a NAV page, or alternatively you could mix and match NAV parts with Dynamics CRM parts and then use SharePoint connectors to connect the different parts so that clicking on one part, updates the other. For example, a customer list part from CRM might update a sales invoice list part from NAV, with the sales invoice list being filtered by whichever customer is selected in the CRM list part.
You can create a true dashboard/cockpit view on a page within SharePoint. Other uses might be more simplistic, for such “light user” activities like posting a timesheet (timesheets are another new feature of NAV 2013) or looking up and updating supplier details.
Moving onto the new NAV web client, the same can be said for this as the SharePoint client. It was all possible with NAV 2009, but required a third party product in order to do it, or required extensive development of custom .NET web pages that hooked into web service enabled pages. With the Web Client though, it all comes out of the box, and just works. I’ve been playing with the beta a fair bit and it really is great. I won’t speculate on what MSFT’ plans are on the 2013 pricing model, but I really expect this to change the landscape of how NAV is sold. It’s pretty old news now that NAV will be hostable on Microsoft’s Azure platform, and don’t be too surprised if we see a similar model to CRM Online that allows you to purchase NAV Online direct from Microsoft.
Almost everything is there in the Web Client that is in the Windows Client (you can’t call it Classic client and Role Tailored Client any more since the Classic client doesn’t exist). I think a couple of the misconceptions about the web client were that matrix type screens wouldn’t be able to run (they look the same as in the windows client) and reports wouldn’t run (which they do). So what’s missing? So far, the things I’ve noticed are:
But that’s not all. One of the biggest frustrations for users going from the older Classic client to the RTC was the lack of ability to filter on sub-form lines, for example lines on a purchase order. And then finding the functions from the little lightning bolt icon was a pain too, especially when it vanished and you are trying to explain to a customer over the phone to click on the lightning bolt that they can’t see! The vanishing lightning bolt is kind of still there, in the form of a vanishing settings cog icon, but they have laid the line actions in such an easier way and added the ability to search and filter on the lines. So much better.
The way dimensions are held against transactions have completely changed too. Previously, viewing and filtering on any dimension that isn’t one of the two global dimensions was extremely difficult without a modification or additional report (with the help of analysis view entries). This has all changed in NAV 2013. As put by the NAV team:
On top of this, independent tests from the people in the NAV community have noted that speed of use in general in NAV 2013 is much faster that NAV 2009 RTC, which is always welcoming to hear.
In fact, NAV 2013 has gone chart crazy. You are able to pretty much convert just about any page in the system into a chart.
So, that was more than four really if you were counting, but these are just some of the things I’m looking forward to in NAV 2013.
http://dotte.ch/the-top-new-features-of-dynamics-nav-2013/?goback=%2Egde_4259732_member_133010052
For this post I’m going to highlight what I feel are the top 4 new features (some may be classed as improvements on existing features) in Dynamics NAV 2013.
SharePoint and Web Client
I’ll call this one out as one new feature, because they do the same thing, but really it’s two.Firstly the SharePoint client allows you to add a NAV page as a SharePoint part. It’s not widely known, but you could do this in NAV 2009. It just didn’t work very well and required you to jump through several hoops to get it to run. Now though, it just works. No extra installs or complicated configuration needed. Just add a new part to the required page in SharePoint and it all just works great. What’s even slicker is that when you click on something in the part, a Microsoft Dynamics NAV ribbon appears at the top of the page in the SharePoint ribbon.
SharePoint with the customer page as a part
Customer selected in part to activate NAV ribbon
You can create a true dashboard/cockpit view on a page within SharePoint. Other uses might be more simplistic, for such “light user” activities like posting a timesheet (timesheets are another new feature of NAV 2013) or looking up and updating supplier details.
Moving onto the new NAV web client, the same can be said for this as the SharePoint client. It was all possible with NAV 2009, but required a third party product in order to do it, or required extensive development of custom .NET web pages that hooked into web service enabled pages. With the Web Client though, it all comes out of the box, and just works. I’ve been playing with the beta a fair bit and it really is great. I won’t speculate on what MSFT’ plans are on the 2013 pricing model, but I really expect this to change the landscape of how NAV is sold. It’s pretty old news now that NAV will be hostable on Microsoft’s Azure platform, and don’t be too surprised if we see a similar model to CRM Online that allows you to purchase NAV Online direct from Microsoft.
Almost everything is there in the Web Client that is in the Windows Client (you can’t call it Classic client and Role Tailored Client any more since the Classic client doesn’t exist). I think a couple of the misconceptions about the web client were that matrix type screens wouldn’t be able to run (they look the same as in the windows client) and reports wouldn’t run (which they do). So what’s missing? So far, the things I’ve noticed are:
- No search box (something that I’ve seen most RTC users depending on)
- No Departments menu (this really backs up the fact that the Web Client isn’t for “power users”), you literally have access to what your role dictates.
- No charts in the role centre.
- No MS Office integration eg. No Outlook part of send to Excel.
- No customisation/personalisation (This was probably one of the biggest selling points of the RTC)
Example Accounting Manager Role in Web Client
Office Ribbon
The introduction of the Office 2010 ribbon in NAV 2013 is a hugely welcome addition. When the first iteration of the ribbon was introduced back in Office 2007, there was much confusion and grumbling from the Office using community. Myself included. People generally don’t like change. We all know it. By the time Office 2010 came along, I really felt that Microsoft had actually taken some of communities criticisms on board though as it was a real improvement. I occasionally have to revert back to older versions of Office when on customer sites who haven’t made the upgrade from Office 2003 yet, and it is really painful using those products. If I’m writing a report in Excel for example, it takes me almost twice as long to do certain things in the older (non-ribbon) version compared to Office 2010. Anyway, I digress… The ribbon makes so much more sense when navigating around the current page in NAV 2013. Everything is a lot easier to find and it’s all still customisable for the user.But that’s not all. One of the biggest frustrations for users going from the older Classic client to the RTC was the lack of ability to filter on sub-form lines, for example lines on a purchase order. And then finding the functions from the little lightning bolt icon was a pain too, especially when it vanished and you are trying to explain to a customer over the phone to click on the lightning bolt that they can’t see! The vanishing lightning bolt is kind of still there, in the form of a vanishing settings cog icon, but they have laid the line actions in such an easier way and added the ability to search and filter on the lines. So much better.
PO screen showing ribbon and new line navigation
Table Locking Architecture and Improved Dimension Handling Redesign
Big changes have been made to speed up the general ledger posting process in NAV 2013, which will enable more users to post orders at the same time. This has always been a stumbling block of NAV and has historically limited the size of organisations that NAV could be implemented into. This should now be a thing of the past. In worst case scenarios NAV 2013 can be set to delay the posting of large numbers of transactions to out of hours and not to hinder the day to day use of the system.The way dimensions are held against transactions have completely changed too. Previously, viewing and filtering on any dimension that isn’t one of the two global dimensions was extremely difficult without a modification or additional report (with the help of analysis view entries). This has all changed in NAV 2013. As put by the NAV team:
In Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2013, the dimensions functionality has been heavily redesigned. Instead of storing all individual dimension values for each record in separate tables, each unique combination of dimensions and values gets an ID, and this dimension set ID is stored directly on the record that those values belong to. With this change, we have taken an important step: to store all information about dimensions and their values directly on the record.This will make dimensional reporting extremely easier.
On top of this, independent tests from the people in the NAV community have noted that speed of use in general in NAV 2013 is much faster that NAV 2009 RTC, which is always welcoming to hear.
Charts and Visualisation
Again, this was something that was hinted at in NAV 2009 with the chart parts. They looked flash but they just weren’t all that useful. With the new charts though, you can hover your mouse over the parts and they will show you additional information, such as actual values. In some cases (depending on how the chart has been designed) you can also click through on the charts and they will show you the underlying data. You can also add parts that are basically made up from Account Schedules, which again allow you not only to click through, but to alter the periods you are looking at, change the period lengths, and force a refresh (meaning you don’t have to come out of the role centre and back in).In fact, NAV 2013 has gone chart crazy. You are able to pretty much convert just about any page in the system into a chart.
An Account Schedule Chart Part
http://dotte.ch/the-top-new-features-of-dynamics-nav-2013/?goback=%2Egde_4259732_member_133010052
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