Microsoft Announces the Availability of Management Reporter for Microsoft Dynamics ERP

Microsoft has now announced the general availability of Management Reporter for Microsoft Dynamics ERP. Management Reporter, formerly codenamed Management Reporter 2.0, will act as the replacement for Microsoft FRx,

www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20000822/MSFTLOGO

Management Reporter extends the proven functionality of Microsoft FRx and enables people to quickly and easily create, generate, help secure and publish professional-looking financial statements, such as profit and loss statements, balance sheets, and cash flow reports, and will also allow them to take advantage of the following:

• Custom reports without IT assistance. These reports reduce the burden on the IT department by empowering the finance team to create its own financial statements.

• Deep cross-functional analysis. Management Reporter provides easy and accurate financial reporting, intercompany reconciliations and eliminations.

• Reduced training time and increased productivity. A familiar user interface and reporting tools minimize training time since users will easily be able to transition from Microsoft Office applications to the similar navigation pane and toolbars in Management Reporter.

• Strong data integrity and report accuracy. Management Reporter supports regulatory requirements, such as generally accepted accounting practices and international financial reporting standards.

"Management Reporter is like Microsoft FRx on steroids — it takes the familiar building blocks of Microsoft FRx and revolutionizes the way reporting and business intelligence can be delivered," said Les Wright, senior consultant, BDO Canada LLP, a Microsoft Dynamics partner. "This is something customers have been asking for and provides even more value to their Microsoft Dynamics ERP solutions."
Microsoft FRx customers making the transition to Management Reporter will experience a variety of new features including the following:

• Direct integration to the Microsoft Dynamics ERP general ledger. This integration aids in simplified, real-time reporting with greater accuracy.

• Reusable building blocks. Blocks of Report, Row, Column and Tree definitions can be mixed and matched to produce a wide variety of boardroom-quality reports.

• A Report Library. A Report Library is where reports can be secured, stored, and viewed

Management Reporter is available for Microsoft Dynamics GP 2010 customers at NO ADDITIONAL COST and will be available with future releases of other Microsoft Dynamics ERP solutions.

To assist customers currently using Microsoft FRx make the transition to Management Reporter, a migration tool, detailed guidance and information is available at

www.microsoft.com/dynamics/en/us/products/management-reporter.asp

Direction of Microsoft Dynamics NAV

Based on Microsoft Dynamics NAV Statement of Direction – April 2010

Microsoft has now announced that NAV is going to support for Unicode with the release of Dynamics NAV "7", which will be released next year - 2011. This will also mean that we are finally going to say goodbye to Navision's native database, which otherwise have served very well basically since the release of the first DOS version of Navision in 1987. It is a goodbye to this REALLY GREAT & SUPER STABLE database.

Unicode has been too much of a worry to the average Navision customer. But for international customers, who have been working with many different countries in the same database, then it's going to be a great help.

NAV "7" will also be another goodbye. With the release of NAV “7”, "Forms" are also going to be disappeared. "Forms" have been the data presentation object until NAV 2009; however with the introduction of the “Role Tailored Client” - “RTC”, it is now the "Pages" which is providing the data presentation to the user. The "Forms" are still used in the Classic Client, but now with the removal of the "Forms" then the typical NAV user will no longer be able to use the Classic Client. (Fortunately) Developers will still have to use the Classic Client, until new development tools will be available in the “Role Tailored Client” with NAV "8" in 2013.

Future of NAV Development Environment

The C/SIDE development environment is going to be replaced from Classic Client to RTC. As you know, still we have to depend on the NAV Classic Client for making any customization, even though we do the implementation in RTC, but this structure is going to replace with the upcoming versions of Dynamics NAV. Some of the highlights would be as follows;

1. No Object Designer! Simple. This will be replaced with Designer Home Center; it will be another role center which allows developers/consultants to make any changes to the standard objects of the application.

2. Page Designer will be replaced with another page where it will allow you to proceed with your table customizations. This feature will be brought into the other object types as well.

3. In the Object List, developer will find the all objects including data about where they used and information about the usage.



4. No Visual Studio! Own simple editor for making all changes in Code Units.



5. The structure of the Editor would be more towards to the look & feel of the Visual Studio. For example the Symbol menu is to be replaced; any parameter that you define will be available in the top of the code lines.

To be continued …

Source:
www.dynamicsuser.net/blogs/kine

Navision Employee Portal

Employee Portal provides a Web-based interface that gives employees quick access to mission-critical business information such as invoices, customer data, and some selected reports. Moreover, it real time integrates with the standard Microsoft Dynamics NAV database while collaborating with Microsoft® Windows® SharePoint® Services 3.0 (WSS 3.0) or Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS 2007) to provide you a browser based interface.

Depending on the volume of transactions and the number of concurrent users, you can setup Employee Portal to run with either WSS or MOSS. However with MOSS, you would get additional support for making further developments.

Employee Portal can also be identified as a Web Portal for Sales Persons who travels all over the country. In such instances, salesperson can logging to NAV and start creating Sales Orders or Sales Quotes as required by them.

Let’s look at some typical screens available in the default Web pages.

Item List /Product List Page
This page can be configured as a combination of List Web Part and Card Web Part page in such a way that Item List is available in the top side of the page. Once user clicks on the ‘Card’ hyperlink on the list then user is directed to the Item Card of the particular Item in the bottom of the page.


What is Employee Portal

There are number of options available in the Item Card where user can modify or even delete the existing items from the system. It also gives some reporting options such as ‘Quantity Explosion of BOM’, ‘Rolled-up Cost Shares’ and ‘Detailed Calculation’



Sales Order Page
As in Item Page, existing Sales Orders can be displayed in the top of the page. As and when user clicks on the particular Sales Order Number then user can be directed to Sales Order Card screen where both the header and the line information are displayed.



However there is no static principle in designing the web pages in Navision Employee Portal. With the given Web Parts, you always have the flexibility to for designing each web page according to the user requirement. For example, in the sales Order screen, instead of showing all existing sales orders in the system, you can display all existing customers in the system. From the Customer List you can filter respective sales orders list belongs to particular customer and then you display the card view of a selected sales order.

Since the installation and setup process takes a very sensitive path, it is recommended that you must strictly follow the standard Microsoft Installation and Configuration Guidelines without any change.

To be continued…

Upgrade from NAV 5 to NAV 2009 SP1 – A Quick Guide

Regardless of the version from which you are trying to do the upgrade, the whole process can be divided into two main phases as Object Upgrade and the Data Upgrade. Let’s first look at the Object Upgrade.

In Object Upgrade, you have to identify all the customizations done in the current live version of the customer database and implement the same in a new 2009 SP1 database. Please remember that there are no short-cuts for this process. This is entirely a manual process, but you can make use of the existing tools such as Developer Toolkit. Using the Developer Toolkit you can compare/merge the original version 5 db and the current customer database wherein you can identify the differences between the two databases and implement the modifications in a new 2009 SP1 fresh database. Once you complete this process, you are through with the phase no 1. Remember that this is the most time consuming phase in an upgrade project. If you make any mistakes then you have to suffer a lot in the subsequent processors.

Let’s look at the phase number two which is the Data upgrade. In this case, I am giving you the main steps for continuing with the data upgrade.

1. Prepare for the data conversion.
a. Make a copy of the database in which you will perform the conversion.
b. Verify that both your partner development license file and customer license file have been upgraded to Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009 SP1.
c. Identify a User ID and password of a super user in the system or create a new super user in the system that you can use for the upgrade process. Log in as the super user when you perform the upgrade.
d. Make a backup of the entire database before you start.
e. Test the database for everything except table/field relationships.
f. Test the database for table/field relationships.
g. Compile all objects and resolve what to do with those objects that do not compile.
h. Uninstall Microsoft Dynamics NAV 5.0 from the developer computer.
i. Install Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009 SP1 on the developer computer, and then start the Classic client.

2. Convert the database to Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009 SP1.
a. Create a new database in Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009 SP1 and restore the backup of the customer’s existing database into the new database.
b. You can also open a copy of the customer’s existing database with the Classic client in Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009 SP1 and convert the database.

3. Delete all objects except tables.
Delete all forms, reports, dataports, XMLports, codeunits, and MenuSuites, from the database. Do not delete the tables.

4. Import the new customized objects that you created under the Object Upgrade Phase.
In this case, you are supposed to replace all objects using the Import Worksheet window. Once all the conflict objects are found, you can replace all objects by clicking the OK button.

5. Compile all objects in the new database.


6. Upgrade data common to all companies.
Upgrade Security Roles and Permissions
If you are upgrading Microsoft Dynamics NAV with Microsoft SQL Server®, then you must synchronize the security system. In the Classic client, on the Tools menu, point to Security, and then click Synchronize All Logins.

7. for each company, initialize the company in the upgraded database.
You can do this by running the codeunit 2, Company-Initialize.
Close the company and open it again.
Open form 531, Setup Checklist, to update the checklist for the Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009 SP1 data structure.


8. Install the new clients.
Make a backup of the new upgraded database.
Remove all previous versions of Microsoft Dynamics NAV from the client computers. Install Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009 SP1 on all client computers. Also install the other tiers in the Microsoft Dynamics NAV architecture.

9. This is the end of the upgrade process from NAV version 5 to the 2009 Classic Client, but before going into Live, TEST… TEST… TEST…

To be continued...

How to run an External Application within Dynamics NAV

Perhaps you may have inquired the possibility of executing an external program within Dynamics NAV due to many reasons such as;

1. To run an external application like Windows Calendar or Skype within NAV
2. To run a Crystal Report using a Icon available in NAV

Whatever the reason, concept for making this a reality would be as follows;

Initially you may have to find out the directory path where the executable file of the external application is located. For example, let's assume that you are in need of calling the windows Calendar within Payment Journal Screen. You can search the calc.exe file where it is located. Mostly this is available in the windows System32 directory. Therefore the relevant directory path could be defined as 'C:\WINDOWS\system32\calc.exe'. In CAL, you could call the Calendar Control by giving the following command;

SHELL('C:\WINDOWS\system32\calc.exe');

This can be achieved by placing an additional command button in the Payment Journal Screen. In the 'OnPush' trigger, once you place the following CAL code you can display the Windows Calendar on top of the Payment Journal Screen.



For example, if you want to direct your browser to open a particular Web Site, for example www.microsoft.com you can do it by placing the following command;

HYPERLINK('http://www.microsoft.com');

Let's say if you want to open a PDF document you could do it by giving the following command in CAL;

HYPERLINK('D:\MyDocuments\80042A_00.pdf');

In the above case, D:\MyDocuments\ is the directory path where the relevant PDF file is located and the 80042A_00.pdf' is the PDF file name.

For instance, if you want to call an External Program using the Menu Structure, you will be able to do it by giving a reference to Code Unit in the relevant Menu Object; in the 'OnRun' trigger of the Code unit you can place you CAL commands to call the external application as explained above.

Trace Flag is no more Required

You may remember that customers who were running NAV 5.0 and NAV 2009 with SQL Server option were required to enable the Trace Flag 4616 in the SQL server database. However, this is no longer required with the latest NAV 2009 SP1 version, as it uses “VIEW SERVER STATE” permissions to enable visibility to the required connection information for each user. Therefore, now it is recommended that Trace Flag to be disabled after upgrading it 2009 SP1. If you are going for new installation, of course this is not required at all.
In most cases, we enabled the Trace Flag by adding it to the startup parameters by opening the "Configuration Tools" folder of the "SQL Server Configuration Manager". However, you can disable it now by following the below steps;

1. Go to Start-> Run and select the "Microsoft SQL Server 2005/2008" program group, select the "Configuration Tools" of the "SQL Server Configuration Manager" tool.
2. Double-click on the SQL Server service.
3. Select the "Advanced" tab
4. In the list of values double-click on the one called "Startup Parameters"
5. In the list of values for this parameter (mostly at the end), remove the following: ';-T4616'
6. Click OK to save the change.
7. Restart the SQL Server service


Note:
In certain instances, you may have done this by using the DBCC TRACEON command. If that is the case, you could also do this by SQL Server Query Window.