Directions EMEA 2011: Microsoft Dynamics NAV Announcements

[Blog bot]

This is the end of quite an exciting week for me .. . People have been asking me: "Hey Waldo, why haven't you been blogging about Directions ?? We count on you, boy!". Well, besides of the fact that I'm really starting to feel much too old for being a "boy" .. I must say that I just was too busy during Directions.

But finally I found some time to blog about it .. and I'll do that in a few parts, because there is just too much to share (anecdotes, nice to know, experience , announcements,...)! This blog will be about (probably for you) the most interesting part: the announcements that Microsoft made (and which I still remembered after the party last (very late) night (and early morning :-/) - there might have been more announcements though, so forgive me my ignorance ;&deg).

Anyway .. here they are...

NAV '7': Classic Reports are discontinued in NAV '7'.

I hope you all know what that means.. . Don't be mistaken .. you DON'T have a reason anymore to postpone working with (and on your) RTC reports, dudes! Get yourself familiar (if not already) with it! As I already stated in previous posts .. there are some great trainings out there to get you started.

To improve the report story in NAV'7', they are working on making your life somewhat easier. Most likely, there will be:

• A new Report Dataset Designer: which makes sense, of course. Now you have to add fields on sections to create a dataset .. which is quite on-orthodox..
• Upgrading to RDLC 2008. Finally, fields can be added directly in headers and footers .. which is a big issue at the moment. You'll be able to use VS2010 .. and new controls will be available, like Tablix and Gauges.. .
• Statistic use of reports at customer site. This is great. This will get you familiar which reports are actually used at a customer .. and if you know that .. you'll only have to convert the used reports. Well .. if we get a chance to have these statistics before NAV '7' comes out.

In my opinion, it's a good move. There should be only one way .. which is the new way!

Free Equisys (Zetadocs) link with Office 365

I didn't experiment with Office 365 yet. But the guys from Equisys did .. and they built kind of a nice tool that imports a certain document into the cloud (Sharepoint on Office365) by just dragging and dropping it into an addin on a RTC page. Really intuitive, straight forward and simple!

And Microsoft makes it possible that this is going to be available for all partners!

BUT

I don't know the specific details about this. And I must say .. there was quite some confusion:

• When is it available?
• Who is it going to deliver?
• What is the consequence (pricewise) for the customer?
• Is it only for partners with an enhancement plan?
• ...

Well, I don't know, but this is what I got out of the different stories: you'll be able to add it in the license for free .. from September .. If you have an enhancement plan. You'll be able to download the control from the Equisys website, for free, and use it in your developments.

In short terms: there was a gap: NAV was not linked with Office365, and Microsoft fills that gap by making available the Equisys solution.

Free Jet Reports Express

Same for Jet Reports Express. Not the full version, but the express version of JetReports will be available for you, free of charge, for every license you sell. And this for the partners who have an enhancement plan.

But same questions here .. When, who, what exactly, .. ? I'm sure a lot will become more and more clear in the near future.



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