Kriki’s Dynamics NAV blog

Well, I won’t be blogging the sessions now because being part of the organization is quite a work.

But something I want to write anyway.

This is the third conference I do and the first one in which I am also an organizer. Well, to be honest, in reality it is Luc who organized all. I, being in Italy, could do very little except giving some ideas, commenting on Luc’s idea’s if I found something could be made better, creating some statistics on the forum use, testing out the premium gift in the morning of the conference (we did use it).

It is hard work. We were there at 7.00 to start preparing (opening the bags to put something extra in and closing them again and putting them at the entrance, putting the drums in place and so on, luckily we had some help.).

We started with a little drumming session by Drum Cafe and then Luc started the opening speech. Not that he really liked to do it, but being organizer and webmaster he couldn’t get from under it (he tried anyway…)

Then I also had my 5 minutes of fame. The statistics on the forum-use was for me. This has been my first time on the podium with so much people. I though it went quite well. (Waldo already gave me some comment on it. I expected worse :-))))  I invite him to put it in the comments).

Then we had a big interactive drumming session that was very funny. A very good idea of Luc. But I thought that unloading and putting in place all those drums was hard work….

Then a Coffee break (at least for the attendees). At least during the sessions we could rest a little. I also noticed that blogging during the sessions is quite hard now that I DIDN’T blog.

Next Generation Unified Communications Platform by Johan Delimon:

And we started with the first technical session about the Next Generation Unified Communications platform. My impression was that from Outlook we will be able to manage phone calls, video chats, webcasts, IM,. You will see directly who is online, who is busy, offline, away, sleeping, in meeting, …

Did I mention that also emails can be managed by Outlook?

Lunch break and VERY hungry….

Architectural deep dive for NAV2009 and beyond, NAV 2009SP1 update, Webservices update by Michael Nielsen, Kim Ibfelt, Claus Lundstrøm:

I learned something that got me my mouth open wide: If you think that the C/AL editor (pre NAV2009) is bad… Actually for NOT being an editor it is VERY good. In reality the C/AL editor was nothing more then a temptable with textfields…

SP1 of NAV2009. What I most remembered was that in codeunit 1 it will be possible to put a global filter on a table. But I am not sure if it is already in it, or it is planned to be put in or they would want to put it in. Anyway, if I had THAT in version 2.01……

Another coffee break

And now the Closing keynote : delivering software to a global audience by Chad Hower:

Well, this is not a strict technical sessions (but it did have a very high slight-count). In short : things you need to think about if you want to sell your add-on all over the globe. It is not just about translating your captions (and even with that a lot can go wrong), but also keeping in mind that not everyone reads left to right or ‘few’ that  means 2 - 4 but in other languages it can mean 2,3,102,103 (if I remember correctly. If the example is wrong, you get the idea about ‘few’ in some other language). But also about the pictures in the slights that can be a ok in 1 country and very offending in another. There were quite some surprises!

I think the best advice was that if you need to translate something, get a NATIVE speaker of that language that also know the source language and NOT the other way around.

Finally Dinner. We had Italian (Luc’s idea, not mine. I preferred another one being used to eat Italian (almost) all the time…), Mexican, wok. Very nice. After that some music and some Belgian beers (not everyone agrees with this, but they are the best in the world anyway!)

We had a very high Dynamics NAV MVP per Square meter count! (see more : http://www.mibuso.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=34371)

And some more links:

http://www.mibuso.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=34354

http://www.mibuso.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=34379

http://www.mibusoconference.com/impressions.asp

http://picasaweb.google.com/NAVCommunity

http://dynamicsuser.net/blogs/admin/archive/2009/05/19/congratulations-to-mibuso-with-the-10-years.aspx

http://dynamicsuser.net/blogs/kine/archive/2009/05/17/future-of-nav-development-environment.aspx

http://dynamicsuser.net/blogs/waldo/archive/2009/05/15/mibuso-conference-2009-overview.aspx

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8E_yhPl8r2M

If someone finds more links, please put them in the comments.

Filed under: Mibuso, NAVISION | 3 Comments »

The hotel was nice. Better than in Paris. Most of us there had a room where you had to walk a long way to reach it dealing with a labyrinth of hallways to reach the room. This hotel was a lot easier to navigate.

The only problem I found was to get some electricity in the auditorio (I didn’t) so at a certain point my battery died and I had to take notes by hand and later try to decipher them. In the other places I found electricity.

In 6 people they organized Directions EMEA 2009. Considering that it is not there primary job, we must congratulate and thank them (and their companies) for organizing this beautiful and interesting event.

One thing I would say for the future: help them in organizing it and book in the hotel(s) they reserved and don’t wait until the last moment. Do it as fast as possible (it also costs you less). I don’t write this because they asked me to, but because I heard them talking about some problems they encountered because people waited until the last moment for booking and also because they booked in other hotels.

I thought they would have had yellow shirts like last year, but now they were pink. I have given them an advice : next year green shirts. Everyone is going green, so….

They were aiming to get 400 people or more but with the crisis they stranded at 308 (2 more then last year). But I think it is a success anyway by not losing people.

Like last year, there were a lot of Flemish and Dutch. I thought it was because Paris was quite near so they could go by car. But also this year they were many. When I asked some people about the reason, they told that it is their mentality to go to conferences. Italians (and also others) for example don’t have that mentality and that is a shame. They are losing a lot of possible networking and information (or maybe they read my blog).

On the contrary I just said, this year I noticed more Italians then last year. One even had a stand!

Very strange. Most attendees never have contact with the organizers. I did have a lot of contact with some of them. Maybe because I am a blogger (or in this case the only one).

Sometimes I almost felt like a journalist. Maybe I should get a press-card.

The only problem is that we always have to be careful about what we are blogging. Not only as MVP’s, but also as partners. So future bloggers of Directions (and also other conventions): be careful about what you blog and if you have doubts, ask the presenter (or also your MVP lead) if you can blog about it.

BTW : I did learn MS One Note now after seeing it using on Directions EMEA 2008 (http://mibuso.com/blogs/kriki/2008/04/21/some-general-remarks/) and I don’t know what I would do without it.

And that was it for Directions EMEA 2009. I do wonder which colour they will use for their shirts!

And see you all next month with the Mibuso conference and next year with Directions EMEA 2010.

Filed under: DirectionsEMEA2009 | 3 Comments »

Yesterday Gerdien Cammeraat told me there that my blog would be mentioned in the endnote. And of course I missed it because I was still in the lab. I asked her what was told on it. And she told me that the speaker told that the event was being blogged and that others should take up the example (Waldo, get blogging again!).

Most tables were full and I didn’t know the people where there was place, so I ended up on 1 of the pink panther tables.

Finally some pictures now. I haven’t taken any pictures yet, but now I have some. The quality is not that good, because I am using my cellular phone.

First the main table of the pink panthers (the most pink panthers where at that table).

While we were eating, we had some entertainement:

Filed under: DirectionsEMEA2009 | 2 Comments »

This is the first time (ok, this is the second year Directions EMEA is organized) they organized a ’serial’ session that is continued after the pause.

There were quite a lot of people and most haven’t really worked with the transformation tool (neither did I ). If the session took 3 session-hours, it would have been better because in 2 we didn’t conclude everything.

It was quite good organized. 1 person explains and some others going around in case of problems (and there were some problems with the VPC). I also had some weird problem when running the transformation tool. Luckily deleting the subdirectory and re-copying fixed it.

There were 3 exercises for transforming a form. The first exercise we could all do together. When we started second one, Brett (at least I think it was him) said that he would do it alone and that we should just follow his actions because there wasn’t enough time. At the end of the 2 session-hours, we didn’t even completely finish the second exercise.

I really liked this one. Each year there should be 1 (or more) sessions on the things that are actual (like form transformation now).

Or maybe an even better way would be to organize an extra day (or even 2) with just these kind of sessions. Last year, SQL Perform Ltd. organized a pre-event workshop for tuning SQL and I think that was a good idea. Someone who is interested can combine both.

Filed under: DirectionsEMEA2009, NAVISION, RTC | Make a Comment »

I would say there are less people than on the other keynotes. How would that come?

Well, some have already left for home. Some are visiting Barcelona (La rambla, Sagrada Famiglia,…) and some have a headache (confirmed by the speaker!). There is a lot to see in Barcelona but you need good weather (I don’t know why, but the 2 times I came here I have had rain). At least today is quite sunny.

The Directions EMEA survey of some months ago about 2009

• A lot of people filled in the survey they send out some months ago. The answers come from a lot of countries.
• Most people are NAV resellers (but also CRM and AX were quite present).
• We are all somewhat concerned about the crisis.
• Everyone expects a turnaround around mid 2010. 2 other studies (customers and partners in Convergence US) expect the same thing. The NAV guys expect it to be somewhat earlier. An advice is to not kill of your projects because when all gets better, you will have a big disadvantage.
• Most don’t expect to lose people in 2009.
• License revenue (MS products and partner products), 2009 company growth are expected to be stable or  even grow a little. Service revenue and new business opportunities are expected to grow 5%-10%!
• NAV,AX,CRM demand are expected to grow a little.
• SL and GP are expected to go down.
• Expected demand for Dynamics: Distribution, professional service, manufacturing.
• Most partners expect to sign additional vertical solution partners or create new ones themselves.
• Who do we fear most? SAP and other dynamics partners.
• Convinced by SaaS? Most people still aren’t. After the SaaSplaza, I am convinced. It has a lot of advantages for customers (and also for partners): customer costs are spread and fixed. For customers without real IT people, their systems are more under control: they only know they have a problem when they can’t login into NAV….
• For partners: For which products SaaS is attractive: ERP.
• For customers: For which products SaaS is attractive: BI analytics.
• What can Microsoft do better? There is a BIIIIIIIGGGGGGG list. And that list made its way into Microsoft and they are looking at it (and hopefully learning something from it).

My conclusion is that even if we are in a crisis, most people are positive about the (NAV-)future.

In a world full of (economic) doom-talking, it is quite nice to here some positive thinking.

Filed under: DirectionsEMEA2009 | Make a Comment »

Well, I skipped this one. But I did have some info on it.

In busses they went to the stadium. There they had a tour in the stadium.

There should have been a match, but it has been cancelled.

After the tour the went to eat in the VIP-lounge (if I understood [and remember] correctly).

And then back to the hotel.

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Well, if Convergence EMEA 2009 is cancelled, you can come to the Mibuso conference (http://www.mibusoconference.com/) on 14 May 2009. Microsoft wants to substitute Convergence EMEA 2009 with local events. And this is a local event and Microsoft is sponsoring it.

One of the speakers is Michael Nielsen, a former Navision a/s employee Number 5, and the creator of the original C/AL compiler.

Filed under: DirectionsEMEA2009, Mibuso | Make a Comment »

1. Why go into SaaS
   • Strong growing demand
   • CAPEX become OPEX
   • TCO is predictable, visible, flexible and … Lower
   • Risk is reduced to the minimum
   • Sales cycles are down
   • Margin contribution is healthy
2. Who is SaaSplaza
   • 1 million end-users in 55 countries
   • 2 datacenters, 1500+ servers
   • Overseeing 50+TB of critical customer data
3. Trust Services (TM) certificate: only global quality standard
4. SAS 70 Type II certificate: annual audit of documented quality management systems
5. BS7799 certified data centre
6. Commitment
   • Nr 1 in Microsoft Dynamics S+S
     • Follow all MS requirements
     • Having a MS premier support agreement
     • Open invitation to all MD ISV’s to join
     • 100% partner oriented
     • On a non-exclusive basis
7. Why should an ISV/VAR become a partner?
   • There are a lot of good reasons, but I couldn’t write them down because they were not exactly short and I couldn’t make the reasons more compact without loosing something.
8. Competiveness
   • Contract period 1 month: customer can step out of it each month. So he is not a hostage.
   • # of users can differ per month
   • 24 hour delivery of new NAV instance
   • Transparent low pricing per user per month
     • Includes all software ex. NAV, the use of the infrastructure and operational management. (They take care of the backups! Very interesting this one.)
     • Partner defines end price. So you can make some extra money.
9. Enrich your offering
   • Combine NAV with
     • Office, CRM,  SharePoint, ISV granules, web portals or your own developments
     • Connecting services with-on premise systems
     • Integrating web services
     • Back-up-2-on-premise: every day the backup is pushed back to the customer on some server in his office.
     • Migration services: migrating using SaaSplaza and after some months customer can decide to remain or get back locally
   • User management
   • Admin rights for end users
   • Monitoring performance
   • …

 

Filed under: DirectionsEMEA2009 | 2 Comments »

Gerdien started with asking MS to get an object range for the add on, then Erik took over and we got really technical. And once his add on was ready, Gerdien took over again to finish the administration part with MS.

 

1. Before development
   • Registered partner
   • Solution provider agreement (SPA)
   • MS Dynamics NAV addendum
   • And I missed the others…
2. Recommended
   • MBS  competency
   • ISV competency
   • Business plan (add-on)
3. Step 1: request form (fill in and send)
   • Add-on name
   • End user price
   • # of objects (+-)
   • Developer license no.
4. Step 2: MS checks and creates granules
   • A unique number range will be assigned. In general after some days.
5. What technical issues
   • Technical and functional design
   • Development guides
   • Release management
   • Support
6. Technical and functional design
   • How to define the functional requirements?
     • How it usually happens: you build it for a customer and then create add-on. Best is to rebuild it after some time.
     • How it “should” happen.
     • Try to limit features. It sells, but quality will go down.
   • Think about NAV license
   • Upgradeability: touch minimal number of default NAV objects
   • Think default NAV
     • Journals/ledger entries/posting routines
     • Form design (NAV 2009?)
     • Navigation
7. Development guidelines
   • Before coding
     • If international : develop in W1
     • Latest possible version
     • Start developing in the no. range assigned by Microsoft.
       • Mind the field numbers
   • Coding
     • Stick to the rules
       • English!
       • Tables:
         • Never change/delete keys - only add keys
         • Think of SQL server
       • Fields:
         • Don’t change field ID’s or names
         • Don’t change the length
         • Don’t re-use fields
       • Variables:
         • Use a consistent naming convention
       • Functions:
         • Self-explaining function names
         • Try to avoid global variables
     • Avoid using “WITH”
     • Avoid code on forms
     • Try to “bundle” separate pieces of functionality in functions
     • Never remove code, use slashes (avoid {}).  Well in NAV2009 it is a lot better to use // (Comments are coloured green!). Before I preferred the {} because the original line remained the same and comparing tools had it easier to find those. But now with NAV2009 and that green colour (Hey,NAV is going green!)
     • Always think about this:
       • Someone else is going to deploy and work in your codebase
       • You have to be able to easily upgrade to each release and service pack
     • Minimize changes on forms
     • Minimize changes on reports
     • (actually … Just minimize any changes)
     • Why document in code?
       • Readability
       • Upgradability
       • Mergeability
       • Maintainability
       • Mark where you start and end the code
       • Version list
       • Documentation section
   • Automations:
     • Make sure it meets the fxCop standards. Download fxCop and use it.
       • Memory leaks
       • Version
       • Naming conventions
       • Error handling.
   • NAV 2009?
     • 100% form transformation: Yes or No?
   • Testing
     • Monkey testing
     • Predefined scripts
     • Who?
       • Developer
       • Analyst
       • Customer
     • Performance test
     • Use early adopters for big releases
   • Version management
     • Versions, SP, hotfixes
       • 1.xx
       • x.1x
       • x.x1
     • Release object: modified/versions/date
   • Only implement released versions
   • Documentation
     • Correct US English
     • Reseller oriented
     • End user oriented
     • Release notes
     • Manuals
     • Online help
     • E-Learning
   • Roadmap
     • Communicate roadmap regularly
     • Receive feedback from partners and customers
     • Think about the strategy
   • Distribution
     • Localization
     • Translation
   • Support
     • All servicepacks and versions available for download
     • Forum, technical, functional
     • Whitepapers / Best practices
     • Obviously, (online) helpdesk
   • After development
     • Step 3: report used object numbers, list of countries
     • Step 4: receive notification (can take up to 2-3 weeks)
     • Changes / extensions : repeat step 3/4
     • Optional (but strongly recommended)
       • Dynamics ISV Software solutions test
         • DB test
         • Test procedures
         • Documentation
         • Uninstall procedure (WHAT!? Well, it is easy enough:take the original objects and put them back in the DB. Well an easier procedure-description is difficult).
       • Certified for Dynamics
         • Reference cases
     • Report add-on sales
       • MS provides report: licenses with your add-on configured
     • Marketing
       • Channel builder (partners)
       • Solution finder (Customers)

 

 

Well, if I am developing in a wrong way, at least I know I am not alone! I already follow all coding guidelines (except than the commenting with //, but I will consider it) Eric gave.

 

I have to admit that Eric has done better presentations (well, I only saw one other presentation of him: http://mibuso.com/blogs/kriki/2008/04/17/hardware-recomendations-to-make-installations-hum-by-eric-wouters/  and also his mike was not functioning well). I think that the not-developers could get bored by it, but being a developer, I was really interested.

Filed under: Add-on, DirectionsEMEA2009, NAVISION | 3 Comments »

• Creating a complex report: most time goes in layout and coding. The transformation tool flattens all the dataitems of a report. E.g. an invoice with a dataitem for the header, a dataitem for the lines and a dataitem for the VAT lines are converted in 1 flatfile in which all fields exist. The ones that are not valid are null.
• Layout differences

  • C/SIDE	Reporting services
    Multiple headers, bodies, footers	One header, one body, one footer
    Sections layout	Table layout
    Support for Non truetype font	Only truetype font
    Data fields in headers and footers	Only references in headers and footers
    OnPostReport after section triggers	OnPostReport before layout controls
    Request form	Request page

• Needs special attention
  • Code on section triggers: not supported but there is a workaround with expressions
  • Layout specific currReport functions like newpage(), showoutput()
  • Createtotals()
  • Dynamic section printing based on a request form parameter. It is possible to show/hide fields and not just sections. NICE!
  • No transheader/-footer functionality in reporting services
  • Changing the papersource via code, printer drivers should be configured.

• Checklist
  • CanGrow Property: for decimals, codes, dates. It grows vertically showing the complete content! WOW, wish we had this in NAV reports!
  • Margin/page size issue
  • Format fields
    • Decimals
    • Dates
  • Use of option fields. Must use FORMAT in the sourceExpression in NAV.
  • Use of booleans.
  • New page per group. In VS there are a lot of possibilities for page breaking
  • Conditional coding in RDL. Fields, and almost all properties can have an expression.
  • Printing on more than one page with pagenumbers. Must use VS pagenumber and not the NAV one.
  • BlankZero: not supported directly. There is a function (BlankZero) for it that can be used in an expression.

Now a report has been converted into VS. But it can do a lot more.

Now a demo of a report with some extra’s.

• Interactive and collapsible lines. A lot of work to do that… Just a visibility property that changes. WOW!
• Images that swap based on a value (there are also with embedded images!)
• Dynamic filtering: property interactive sort and some parameters and done.

This session started a little boring, but after some time it got really interesting. But we should start learning VS!

Filed under: DirectionsEMEA2009, NAVISION, VisualStudio | Make a Comment »