RTC 101

charlesthompson

I am an IT administrator that has been tasked with gathering all the information needed for our organization to create role centers. I have to compile this information and provide it to our senior Nav admin and Nav developer.

Is there a standard set of questions I should ask each department? Or a template for information gathering that one should use to gather this? I am new to RTC and Role Centers.

Thanks,

Charles Thompson

pdj

This is a very critical part of a succesfull NAV implementation, so I will strongly recommend having an experienced partner involved. Microsoft provides a document called "User Profile Interview Guide Microsoft Dynamics NAV" as part of Sure Step. I think it is available for all partners via PartnerSource, and it might be available for customers with CustomerSource access as well.

Try this link: https://mbs2.microsoft.com/Surestep/default.aspx
If you have access, you should be able to find the document here:
Solution Envisioning -> Decision Accelerated Offerings -> Requirements and Process Review

Alex_Chow

pdj wrote:

This is a very critical part of a succesfull NAV implementation, ...

You would think so, but in fact, the standard Role Centers out of the box are crap other than the Order Processor role.

Most of the time, the users prefer just to stick with the Order Processor role center and just use Departments to navigate around.

So you can have a successful NAV implemention in RTC without focusing on Role Centers.

pdj

The document starts with these statements:

* IMPORTANT: Unless you fully RoleTailor the RTC, the user experience will be worse than that of a comparable traditional product!
* You should never let users work on an RTC solution that has not been RoleTailored because Navigation will take too many steps, Role Centers will not be of any value, and task pages will require too many steps to expand/collapse the FastTabs.

And I tend to agree, but no rule without exceptions...

Alex_Chow

pdj wrote:

The document starts with these statements:

* IMPORTANT: Unless you fully RoleTailor the RTC, the user experience will be worse than that of a comparable traditional product!
* You should never let users work on an RTC solution that has not been RoleTailored because Navigation will take too many steps, Role Centers will not be of any value, and task pages will require too many steps to expand/collapse the FastTabs.

And I tend to agree, but no rule without exceptions...

Yes, I agree with those points. But as it stands, unless the end users are willing to spend hundreds of hours just on the role center customization, it's still crap. Even out of the box is not remotely close what 90% of the users want.

pdj

I agree - it is rather costly to get good results. The problem is not the actual developing, but finding out how each rolecenter should be designed. This is where the document can help, and hopefully reduce the cost.

I have never been a fan of the different menu-structures Microsoft have made. I think the biggest benefit of the NAV4-5 menu compared to NAV1-3, is the ability for each user to make a shortcut menu. I also still find the biggest benefit of the NAV2009 menu, is the ability to search for menu-items.

Alex_Chow

pdj wrote:

I agree - it is rather costly to get good results. The problem is not the actual developing, but finding out how each rolecenter should be designed. This is where the document can help, and hopefully reduce the cost.

::Off topic::
Programming is never the hard part, programming what people wants is the toughest challenge.

I'm still amazed at Apple on how they got it so right...