Upgrade Navision from 3.7 to 4.0

Baz

We have been on Navision 3.7 for about six months and are interested in upgrading to 4.0. We have made numerous reporting mods and some code mods, but nothing too crazy. Our reseller is telling us it will take 80 hours to do the upgrade for us.

I'd like to hear from the MBS partners out there what is involved in an upgrade and if 80 hours is reasonable. We are not running SQL and 80 hours seems very high to me. That is two people working for a full week (in the U.S.) It seems to me all you need to do is save all your mods, put the CD in, click "Next" a few times and then import your mods. Like all MS software. Am I being naive?

Any guidance would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Baz

Ian_piddignton

Hi Baz

As yet I don't think V4 is released, although the US is normally one of the first batch of countires to roll out new product.

I believe that there have been an number of things changed behind the scenes in V4.0 and while the interface is still very similar some of the underlying code has been modified.

Depending on how much has been customised in your installation the NSC will need to compare all objects in your 3.70 installation to those in the 4.0 version. They will then have to make the appropriate modifications on your custom objects to ensure they continue to work as originally designed and then everything will need to be re-tested. I know form experience that a 'simple' upgrade(just moving from 3.60 executables to 3.70 executables) casued problems in some reports due to the way certian properties are handled on the newer version.


So depending on how many objects we are talking about(ie your customised and completely new objects) but 80 hours could be about right. The backend database makes very little difference to how long it takes to do the work on the objects, you could even view it as taking longer on a non SQL system as the navision server components need upgrading as well as the client ones, for SQL its just the client that needs the upgrade. Ok I know that it doesn't take very long to install and configure the Navision server before anyone points it out

Unless you guys work really short weeks(in which case I may have to move to the US) thats 1 person working for 2 weeks. :P

regards

Ian

Baz

Thanks Ian,

<rant>

Our reseller is downloading 4.0 as I write this.

It's nice to get some unbiased opinions, well at least an opinion from someone I am not giving money to. The Navision distribution and support channels seem immauture to me and so much of a customer's experience depends on the reseller.

With our old ERP software we dealt directly with the company that made it for support and modifications. I would often get referred directly to a software engineer for challenging solutions. It was more expensive but very consistent and they had good techs.

I wish Microsoft would take a more direct role in the sales and implementation as it would reduce dramatic differences in how much things cost from one reseller to another. Something as simple as a Knowledge Base like TechNet would be a really good start.

I believe in the software and see the beauty of it, but every time we want to do anything with it we just start bleeding money. Our reseller is good, but sometimes it's nice to get a second opinion.

</rant>

And no, I'm pretty sure the work weeks are longer here than anywhere in the world. Thanks for catching my bad math.

Thanks,
Basil

Savatage

As in any new version, I never feel completely safe being the first one on the block with a new version. Usually new versions fix a few old bugs & create a few more. I'm interested on how V.4 does in it's first few months.

kine

I tried the Navision 4.0, downloaded from MIBUSO, installed, run, and after 3 minutes of work I know certain way how to get error from client (Send report to MS and restart the application - the standard form when application do invalid operation). Gantt graph don't work too (on my installation).

Savatage is right about new versions.

And 2 weeks for upgrade to ver. 4.00 is OK for me too. One developer, one consultant for testing, if DB is hardly customized...

2tje

I have done several upgrades.
Installing the server and the clients often is the easy part.
Upgrading the objects can take 5 minutes up to many weeks.
Upgrading the data can be 5 minutes or many hours, depending of the amount of data and number of companies in the database.
But why the rush? What does 4.0 have that 3.70 doesn't ?
I remember the launching of 3.0. My advise, wait a couple of months or for version 4.01.

gatorhacker

I don't see how anyone here can reasonbly tell you if 80 hours is a good quote or not. It all depends on how modified the database is. Like the previous post it can take from 5 minutes to weeks. That is very true. I too have performed many upgrade and they range from 1 week to 3 months to prepare. Depending ENTIRELY on how modified the database is. But since you are going from 3.7 that will take some time away as opposed to going from say 2.6 or earlier versions. But from what you are saying that you aren't heavily modified I would say that 80 hours isn't that bad. Plus going to 4.0 when it's not officially released til Oct 29th I don't see how they can truely guage how long it will take if they have to retrofit mods from 3.70 to 4.0. Good luck anyways.

frede

The upgrade procedure is actually to do the whole design and programming again - only in the new version.

Problems arise if Navision has changed programming logic in the same places as you have, then you have to decide what the new solution should do.

If that is not the case, then using Navision Developers Toolkit doing the upgrade is today a quite easy task. BUT if it is the case, then you have to re-think code and do serious testing to be sure that you end up with the same results as you have today.

Look at your investments in programming hours from your reseller in Navision up until now.

Then look at how many changes in forms and reports and dataports (existing - not new). Because it is VERY time-consuming (in my view) to rework these in a new version. These changes is approx. 1 to 1. You have to do the changes again.

The code-change is maybe 1 to 5, that is, if it took you five hours to program, then - in total - it will take you 1 hour to update. Normally it will be more like 1 to 10 - because you can copy-paste and so on - but sometimes - as stated above - you have to re-engineer..

Overall it is- as others have stated - impossible to say, how many hours it will take - without doing the actual upgrade.

Also Navision has unfortunately been known to have errors in the upgrading tool making it a time-consuming job to do the actual data conversion!!!! Usually the data conversion has not been tested with large databases so missing out on correct keys is a given....

In all - it is still a question of trusting the reseller...