Dynamics Nav 5.0 Preview Presentation TechEd

DenSter

I think that this post has turned into WILD speculation as to how things will work. Although lots of fun, I want to point out that nobody can really say anything with any certainty. Even the programmers working on the product themselves don't know all the answers.

Let's not forget that all we are doing is speculating. Alright, speculate some more

Phenno

DenSter wrote:

I think that this post has turned into WILD speculation as to how things will work. Although lots of fun, I want to point out that nobody can really say anything with any certainty. Even the programmers working on the product themselves don't know all the answers.

Let's not forget that all we are doing is speculating. Alright, speculate some more

there's nothing wrong with speculations as long as we know that these are speculations
It's always nice to hear some other opinions and expectations.

Miklos_Hollender

DenSter,

three things everybody on Earth is an expert in is football, politics, and NAV5

DenSter

that is funny, I have to remember that one

themave

In this whole discussion I didn't see anything that is an advantage for the end user, did you,

I mean a new interface, still basically shows that same thing, you have a sales order and lookup fields for related info.

the role based view, I have that now, I have a menu suite for different types of users, and by the way not a one of them would use the dashboard type interface where everything is on the screen in one handy view. All my users maximize each form they are in, so a sales order takes up the whole screen, after all that is what they are working on most of the time anyways..

I do see an advantage to Dynamic 5.0 for the developer and solution center, lots more billable hours, and you are almost gauranteed your customers won't be able to do anything in Navision on there own, they will have to come to you for everything, even designing a simple report.

Just my opinion though

David

Waldo

That's a whole new interesting discussion (may be a new thread). What are the end-user advantages.

For me, a role based view is a lot more than a customized menusuite. Indeed, it's some kind of dashboard screen (which should be easy-to-create, easy-to-modify). I see this as a huge advantage.

Also the graphical possibilities (graphs, drag/drop,...) will be quite nice.

Thin client: This should result in better performance, no?

azwierzchowski

Thin client: This should result in better performance, no?

I'm not sure if the performance will be better. It will be thin client, but it will be .NET application, and this nice looking controls will be rendered using .NET code. Every OnPaint event will produce many objects for GC to collect and destroy.

Compare performance of .NET Framework 1.1 applications UI (it's just thin layer between .NET and Win32 api) and .NET Framework 2.0 UI. Also look at SQL Server Management Studio. It's so sloooow....

In my previous work (2 years ago) I was developing mobile application in C# for PDA and PC. I had P4 1.4 GHz machine with 512 MB ram and 1 GB swap file. Mobile forms designer in Visual Studio was generating so many garbage for GC to collect that every 2 or 3 hours garbage collector was collecting garbage/defragmenting memory(and swap file) and computer was useles for 3-4 minutes (the same behaviour i've seen in 1992 in Lego language, the only difference is that 15 years ago we had blinking cursor on screen and now we have lighting HDD LED ). It usualy happened when I click dropdown on some properies in PropertyGrid to change it just from false to true (internally drop down control on PropertyGrid asks TypeDescriptor for array of available values, so imagine how many arrays are left for GC if you are designing forms all day).

I don't think that performance for customer will be bad, maybe it will be a bit slower. But it may be bad for us.

Miklos_Hollender

Themave,

I think if it will be done properly, there might be a huge advantage for the end-user.

Currently the problem with most ERP system is that it's the end-user who has to remember what work needs to be done. Therefore, f.e. you have to remember to go to Transfer Order List and filter to get what TO's you need to receive.

It seems this new client will do a lot to remind people (by the Activites tab on top) on what they need to do. This is quite important, quite a lot of my customizations started with "X.Y. forgot Z. thing again, please do something about that".

Also, role-based fields can mean a lot for usability. I too often ended up for forms called "Purchase Order for Purchasers", "Purchase Order for the Warehouse" etc. Navision biggest problem is that this many fields are quite confusing, people don't what they need to fill and what not.

I think an ERP system should kind of work like a virtual boss, directing, managing things and not just throw confusingly many functionality to users and let them do whatever they want to do with it.

For most day-to-day software like Outlook people generally don't need training. An ideal ERP system also would need to able to be used - configured properly and with some small customizations, without any major surgery - without any training. Maybe NAV5 will be a big step into this direction.

Or maybe it'll just be a bad rip-off of SAP's and Oracle's "portal-like user experience". Nothing is sure yet.

We'll see.

johnson_alonso

Dear All,
I've known a little bit about Dyn Nav. 5.0 after downloaded it from this forum about NAV 5.0 version.
Navision is an ERP system. ERP is enterprise resource planning and it comes after the previous system are incompletely fulfilled what the market's one. The first is MRP, MRPII then ERP.
There are many problems within the ERP system but we must remember that the problem caused by unknown the whole market needs (end users need). Navision 5.0 will be released to solve the problems of the previous version and or updated but it still based on ERP system.
For example, it explained that Kanban can't be made in Navision because some companies use Kanban and some are not and also another reason relates to ERP concepts.
Just browsing to http://www.erpevaluation.com/

It is good to evaluate all ERP systems and just learning a lot before write in this forum that there are many problems in ERP system. It's no good to say it as if you are an expert that create ERP system


Rgds,
Johnson

Miklos_Hollender

The first is MRP, MRPII then ERP.

Sorry, but it's a purely theoretical university-based historical info. Does not have much to do with reality as of now. It's exactly the same stuff I found with Google when I was preparing for my NAV Manufacturing exam in early 2003 and didn't ever use it after that, because it's so far from reality.

kriki

[Topic moved from Upcoming version NAV 5.1 forum to Navision forum]