David Singleton's Navision Blog

Le Gendarme de St. Tropez

Oh no Iwas robbed in St. Tropez

For those that don't know Le Gendarme de St. Tropez is a classic French comedy, and probably the best role known of Louis de Funès.

Anyway... as some of you know I have been travelling a lot lately, (even by my standards  ). So after sorting personal issues back in Austalia, stopping for a business meeting in Singapore, going to the MVP open days in Moscow, and then looking at  Convergence Munich and Tech Ed Barcelona, I discussed the logistics with my wife, and we worked out that we could sneak in some vacation time in between so decided to drive to Germany and Spain togehter . Ultimately planning a few days in St. Tropez and then Verona, squeeze in one more business meeting inVenice, then head back to The Czech Republic for an MVP training day in Prague.

Well after St. Tropez, we stopped at a restaurant for lunch, sat outside about 30 meters from our car, and right under our eyes without noticing anything, they reobbed us and cleaned us outof everything. At least 5 people on the balcony could see our car whilst it was being robbed. The only time a car was parked next to mine was for about 90 seconds, so that's howmuch time they had. Also imagine two of us travelling three weeks, its amazing how much they got out the wndow in 90 seconds. (to aviod setting off the alarm, they didn't even open the doors).

So anyway, yes tell me I was stupid, but my computer was in the car, and of course my backup hard drives (yes TWO) are both also stolen.

For me without any doubt, my biggest loss though, is all the business contacts I made at Convergence and Tech Ed. I was very thourough, and every night I wrote details on my Logitc IO2 pen then backed it  up on my external drive, but Pen, Pad, Computer and backup are now all gone. As well as all the business cards I collected.

Sooooo PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE anyone that I contacted at Tech Ed or Convergence, can you please email me at community@go-live.us because I have almost certainly lost your contact details.

Right now I am "stranded" in Monaco, waiting for new passports for my wife and I, (yeah go ahead tell me not to leave my passport in my car , though I sorta already know that now), Monaco by the way is not a bad place to be stranded . Luckily I had my Amex card in my pocket, so it wont be too bad here (well at least untill next month's bill comes )

One great thing, is that at the Gendamrie I met Jan, a Dutch guy living in St Martinez with his Russian wife. Like all the Dutch people I have met, he was wonderfull, we went to his house for dinner, he let me call the credit card companies to cancel credit cards, found the consulates to get passports, even got us tooth brushes and stuff like that  he was just great. Most of allhe just gave usthe chance to sit and relax and get our wits about us. Thanks Jan!

Another thing I realized, is that although I have a backup of all incoming email, I realize that Idon't have a backup of any outgoing emails that I have send from outlook working off line so if I sent you an email, please understand that I no longer have history of it, so I am not sure what I sent. Please reply back to me with a reminder.

Anyway, the sun is shining here, the French are being just  wonderfull to both me and my wife, and I am sure that tomorrow will be even brighter.

 

Time for a fresh start.

Tech ED IT Forums EMEA Barcelona

I am in Barcelona now, at Tech Ed.

This is very different to convergence, and I will write about it as soon as I get a chance. But for now...

There was a great presentation this morning "Overview of Microsoft Dynamics" it clearly showed product positioning and directions for the Dynamics family. The presenter is not directly involved with any of the Dynamics products, so his comments were very open and unbiased.

A couple of interesting notes: one was that there really is a new language, currently just called "MS Dynamics Tool" and that Microft are already planing the outlines of NAV versions 6 and 7. Definitely the future is looking very bright.

Convergence EMEA Day 3.

Well last day.

Today was (for us at the Community Loinge) the busiest day. We had a lot of people coming wanting to know about communities, and how to get the most out of them. Again a lot of people that really don't know about the forums, or about just how many of us there are out there that give free advise. It was interesting the number of questions that I heard that could be easily answered by a search here or on mbsonline.

I wanted to try to get some more concrete answers on SQL, but thinking back, I guess its hard formt hem to give a concret answer. Its pretty clear that we will see C/SIDE supported for the forseeable future, but from they way they were talking, all the reall future developement is moving towards SQL.

On eclear statement from the experts today, is that would should not be expecting any new enhanced report wrtier for the C/Side server version of Navision. If you want a better report writer, then the solution really is SQL Reporting Services.

Personally after the session today, I would start to recommend that Navision clients wanting to look at upgrading, and getting the most out of the system, really need to start now at looking to get their IT department SQL ready.

I am now doing some research to see what is needed, and I will post an updated version of my "Should I move to SQL Blog" later. For now though I woul dat least suggest that Navision IT departments that do not have SQL in house, at least start to get a feel for SQL, and looking at what it can offer you.

Of course this is not just Navision, because these days, SQL is a lot more than just a database. I was really impressed with what it can offer even to smaller Navision users.

One great piece of news, is that the development team have not forgotten the keyboard. They will be continuing to make Navision a great option for power users that need to enter data, and want to use the keyboard exclusively. And we can expect keyboard usability will not be forgotten. I was very happy to hear this.

One dissapointing thing in my opinion is that there are no short term plans to have Navision supporting Unicode. The logic made sense, and I understand the reasons, but it would have been a nice headache solver for some lingual companies.

For those using Outlook synchronozation, Navision will soon support progressive syncronyzation, so expect the process to be much faster soon.

Another question asked was "if Microsoft plan to increase teh length of standard fields in Cards" for example Item description, customer description etc. Apparantly this is quite a new request to Microsoft, but if you as a Nav end user suggest this to your Microsoft Partner, they will then submit the suggestion to Microsoft though channels, and if enough people request this change, then they will consider it for a later release.
All in all, the future is definitely positive, there were a couple of minuses, but definitely the direction Navision is heading is fabulous, and I came away with a continuing feeling that sticking with Navision continues to be a great decision.

Convergence EMEA Day 2. - Update

Today we had a lot of activity on the booths form people asking about Communities. In yesterdays session Dynamics Communities, I became an impomptu speaker, and this generate a lot of interest in Dynamics Communities.

The biggest surprise was the number of people that came to the Community Lounge, and said that they really had no idea what was available on the interent, but more importantly I was shocked by the number of people that asked "What's n It For Me" in relation to posting and asking questions on Dynamicsusrs.org this was odd. I will definitely be writing more about htis in the future.

It was interesting to here first hand reactions frmo people that knew of www.mbsonline.org, http://dynamicsusers.org and mibusio.com , but really did not see these forums as a realistic source for Dynamics information.

The people at Microsoft have been very responsive to these attitudes, and we will work together to try and change this.


The other big thing, was SQL.
I got a solid answer tot eh question of where we are heading with SQL vs C/SIDE. (YEs I know we have heard this before, but I wanted them to give a solid answer to quell rumours).

Basically 5.1 will continue to run on BOTH servers. And most importantly this will continue into the future (specifically we were told that version 6.0 will run on both platforms with the identical code set.) there will be no seperation of the product. BUT by running on SQL you will get access to ffeatures that are not available on C/SIDE.

But it does mean that we can continue to maintain just one code base. So you will still develop code for three tier cleints on a C/SIDE database, but the user wont be able to run those feaures unless they are on SQL.

update... (ran out of time before).

The best session of Convergence was Hynek Muhlbacher's presentation on Performance tuning in SQL, it was great to see what can be squeezed out of Navision on SQL if you do it properly. It really got me thinking if it really is getting time to start advising people to move over to SQL.

Post

Convergence EMEA Day 1. (Bill Gates' Key Note) - UPDATE

Well Day 1 has just finished, and it was quite a day. Of course Bill's Key Note was the important bit.

The morning started with a general presentation of Navision. Well its was very interestng, mostly in the fact that there was nothign new, but verything was now much more mature.

More important though was the session on Communities. Clearly Micrsoft are pushing stongly for more communities (dynamics users for example is a community), Communities make it easier to deliver standard solutions and give the ability for users to get help beyond the normal chanels. As the largest dynamics community, we know all about this, but we also need to acknowledge, and be ready for change. The delivery model for Dynamics is about ot change, Communities are about to change. (I willl write a lot more about this when there is more time after the event).

So what did Bill Gates have to say?
Well he did not say a lot, but what he said he delivered with great impact and importance.. Definitely he only said what matters, and his presentation was impressive. Much of what he said was very clear, but I believe that also there was a lot to be read between the lines.

For "us" in the community, I think that the most noticable point was his emphasis on Communities as a part of the future going forward for Dynamics. Clearly there is an expectation that Communities will in the future play a much more important role in first line end user support.

But really the most significant message, was that future generations of Dynamics will follow a new path. Bill clearly stated, that his vision is to see a Dynamics product that has very little customization in terms of modifying base code, and instead, reverting back to a true Add-On model. He sees a future where users can purchase Dynamics, and feel confident that upgrading is a simple path. His concept that customizations would be done with add-ons, and the add-on would not touch the base code, but instead be a true add-on, is much like the model that Navision has in the DOS days, where add-ons virtualy did not touch the base code. For example when I developed Stock Manager, I did so without modifiying not even one Base Navsion object. This will be the trend in the future.

Added to this, he made an even more important statement, that he wants to see a product, where add-ons can be developed without the developer haveing deep knowledge of how Dynamics works. Thi sbasically implies that Dynamics Partners will be getting back to doing what they should be doing, i.e. solving client problems and defining business requirements, and development will be handled by specialist companies primarily developing Add-Ons.

It was quite interesting that there was no mention of Verticals, or their role in Dynamics. I do hope that Verticals and Add-Ons are not going to be bundled into one big category together. Its critical (imho) for the future of Dynamics, that there is clear seperation between Verticals and Add-Ons, and who sells them

More to come .......