NDT for Upgrade to Nav 7

Lamba · 2012-05-24

Hi Experts,

1. Is there any new NDT available for Upgrade of any version of Nav (For eg- Nav 2009 Sp1) to Nav 7
2. Any Upgrade Document/Procedure available or any link for Upgradation.

DenSter · 2012-05-24

The NDT has been discontinued for a while. There is no version that supports NAV 2013.

The upgrade documentation is on the installation disk, in the 'UpgradeToolkit' folder.

clausl · 2012-05-25

For all other objects than reports, you will need to upgrade to NAV 2009 first before you can upgrade to NAV 7. Forms are also gone in NAV 7 so upgrading from NAV 5 or below is not possible, also the Forms Transformation tool is not released with NAV 7. So when you have upgraded all objects to NAV 2009, I would use the MergeTool to see how many of the objects which can automatically be upgraded. I would exclude the reports in this process and handle these manually. For Reports get familiar with the new Report UX Guidelines found on the NAV Team blog, then when you have these Guidelines under your skin you will realize how fast a report can be done in SSRS/RDLC. Make sure all code on sections are move to a dataitem and data is shown in the About the Report page. and don't clutter then dataset with multiple identical columns. You really want to minimize the dataset, so unnecessary data is not transferred over the wire from the Server to the RTC client. Upgrading the reports you might want to do in NAV 2009 first, before you upgrade the report to NAV 7, since all code in Sections Designer is deleted when you upgrade the report in NAV 7. Good thing is that we can now install multiple versions of NAV servers and Role Tailored clients side by side, so we can have NAV 2009 and NAV 7 running side by side. So no need to switch computers if you decide to upgrade the reports to NAV 2009 first. I use different ports than NAV 2009 is using during the install of NAV 7 to accomplish this, but you could probably also use "Net.Tcp Port Sharing Service" if you don't want to open any more ports on the server.

But let's leave the reports and get back to the remaining objects, Tables, Codeunits and Pages.
When upgrading your objects to NAV 7 you will need to change many element names. i.e. “RunFormMode” needs to be changed to “RunPageMode”. See the full list on the product DVD ”[DVD]\UpgradeToolKit\Object Change Tools”, also in this folder you will find and exe file which make the necessary changes to your exported objects. You can choose to use this, but you can also do the same with the MergeTool when you export, just check mark “Export with NAV 7 Code Conversion”. I prefer to use the MergeTool to do this job. So I do the following:
1. Export all Objects(except the Reports) to a txt file for the base version i.e. NAV 2009 SP1
2. Export all Objects(except the Reports) to a txt file for your custom version build on NAV 2009 SP1
3. Export all Objects(except the Reports) to a txt file for the latest NAV 7 version.
4. Import the NAV 2009 SP1 txt file into the MergeTool
5. Import the Custom txt file into the MergeTool
6. Import the NAV 7 txt file into the MergeTool
7. Export the just imported NAV 2009 SP1 objects with the check mark “Export with NAV 7 Code Conversion” and import the new text file into the MergeTool
8. Export the just imported Custom objects with the check mark “Export with NAV 7 Code Conversion” and import the new text file into the MergeTool

You now have 3 versions in the Merge Tool.

1. NAV 2009 SP1 in NAV 7 format
2. Custom version build on NAV 2009 SP1 in NAV 7 format
3. And NAV 7

Now we need to merge. Select the Custom version and select “Merge Versions”. Make sure that you have NAV 2009 SP1 in NAV 7 format as the old version and NAV 7 in the new version. Now select a name for your new merged version and where it should be stored.
And finally check mark “Skip if Manual Merge” and hit OK.
MergeTool will now try to merge your 3 versions into one new, which you can import into to NAV 7. Of course you want as many objects upgrade automatically, so this is the time you get up and perform a rain dance and start praying, that your new friend, the MergeTool, can help you as much as possible.
After a couple of minutes MergeTool will report how many of your objects needs to be merge manually. You will realize your new friend just saved you hours and hours of manual work.
Now run the “Compare Previous Version” reports and you have now identified the manual merge job you will need to perform. You can use the MergeTool to help you do the manual merge, just remove check mark “Skip if Manual Merge” when merging. Or you can use tools like Araxis Merge, Beyond Compare or even move the code manual over from NAV 2009 Object Designer to NAV 7 Object Designer. When you have completed all above, will probably take you a day or 2, you are now ready to upgrade your database. You carefully read the “Upgrading the Database” chapter found under the “Upgrading to Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2013” section in the Online Help found here on the Product DVD: [DVD]\Documentation\PFiles\Microsoft Dynamics NAV\70\Documentation\Developer Guides.
When database is upgraded you import you automatically upgraded objects and your manual upgrade objects. You have now completed the upgrade and you transfers all data from the old NAV 2009 SP1 system to your new NAV 7 system.
And you now have one happy customer running on the best Navision version ever build.

/Claus Lundstrøm

David_Singleton · 2012-05-26

:thumbsup:

Claus, that is an excellent post. It's good to have all the information like that in one place.

Lamba · 2012-05-28

Hi Claus,

Certain Queries: :?

1. What you mean to say that, the upgradation from Nav 5 or below is not possible/ it has to be upgraded to Nav 2009 initially and then to Nav 7
2. Please Provide the link for Reports UX Guidelines found on the NAV Team blog.
3. If we have a customized report that is to be transformed from Nav 2009, so for that the code from the the Section triggers is to be shifted to dataitem, and then by importing it to nav 7, the transformation can be done.(Just an idea).
4. And What about the Query Object.
5. Which Mergetool(NDT) is to be used.(i guess NDT 3.0).
6. Where this check mark “Export with NAV 7 Code Conversion” can be found.
7. You have mentioned the “Compare Previous Version” reports option, where it can be found.
8. For Customized Pages, do we have to transform them in Nav 2009, and then can they be imported to Nav 7.
9. And what about the dataports if available.

KSP_NAV · 2012-05-28

Hi Lamba,

The mergetool is a different tool (and NOT a NDT) which will be used to do Translations, merging etc... and you can download this tool from http://www.mergetool.com

Regards,
KSP

clausl · 2012-05-28

Lamba wrote:

Hi Claus,

Certain Queries: :?

1. What you mean to say that, the upgradation from Nav 5 or below is not possible/ it has to be upgraded to Nav 2009 initially and then to Nav 7
2. Please Provide the link for Reports UX Guidelines found on the NAV Team blog.
3. If we have a customized report that is to be transformed from Nav 2009, so for that the code from the the Section triggers is to be shifted to dataitem, and then by importing it to nav 7, the transformation can be done.(Just an idea).
4. And What about the Query Object.
5. Which Mergetool(NDT) is to be used.(i guess NDT 3.0).
6. Where this check mark “Export with NAV 7 Code Conversion” can be found.
7. You have mentioned the “Compare Previous Version” reports option, where it can be found.
8. For Customized Pages, do we have to transform them in Nav 2009, and then can they be imported to Nav 7.
9. And what about the dataports if available.

Hi Lamba,

Thanks for all you questions

1. Pages did not exist in NAV 5. So if you want to go directly to NAV 7 you will need to create all your Pages from scratch. Forms do not exist in NAV 7, so no Form Transformation tool is being released for NAV 7. I prefer using the Form Transformation tool when I'm upgrading forms to pages, but you can of course do everything manually, if this is what you desire.

2. Link to the Report UX Guidelines are here: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/nav/archive/2012/01/31/new-report-ux-guidelines.aspx

3. If you have a Custom NAV 2009 report with RDLC Layout, then you have already done all the hard work. You just need to import this report into NAV 7 and hit upgrade, and verify the RDLC Layout is still OK. There are some slight pagination changes from the RDLC 2005(Layout format in NAV 2009) and RDLC 2008(Layout format in NAV 7). Usually it is for the better, but you need to check.
And another small issue is that hidden expression on header are rendered differently in Report Viewer 2010(The Report Viewer in NAV 7) compared to Report Viewer 2008(The Report Viewer in NAV 2009). So if your report is using Code.Get and Code.Set to work around that we could not add fields directly in Headers and Footers in RDLC 2005, you need to copy the Value Expression to the Hidden Expression, for hidden Code.Set field in your Header to work around this change of rendering in Report Viewer 2010. Any reports I upgrade I will remove the use of Code.Set and Code.Get, since we now in RDLC 2008 can add fields directly to the Headers and Footers, this of course gives a little extra work, but the next report developer will have an much easier task to modify this report going forward.

4. What about the Query Object? The Query Object is new in NAV 7, so nothing really to upgrade from in NAV 2009 or below.

5. NDT(Navision Developer Toolkit) does not support Pages so NDT is not maintained anymore. If you want to see where your objects are used you can do this with the MergeTool or Object Manager, and probably other tools as well. If you can’t figure out MergeTool or cannot afford Object Manager, you could just export all your objects to a allobjects.txt and split all objects to separate files using “NAV Object Splitter” and do a text search. When I go down this path I use “Effective File Search” so I can search for multiple text strings, and even search for text strings not existing in a object. I.e. sometimes I would like to get a list of the reports which are not Processing Only AND does not have RDLC layout, so I know exactly which custom reports I need to upgrade to RDLC.

6. “Export with NAV 7 Code Conversion” is found in the MergeTool under “Functions/Export Object Text File…” and then under the Options tab.

7. “Compare Previous Version” is found in the MergeTool under “Functions”. It gives you are report of the different objects of the 2 versions you compare, so it is not just for reports.

8. Custom Pages can just be imported into NAV 7 if they are in FOB format. If they are in TXT format you will need to change many element names. i.e. “RunFormMode” needs to be changed to “RunPageMode”, as I described earlier.

9. Dataports are discontinued in NAV 7, so you will need to manually convert them to XML ports, and if they are just for getting data out of NAV 7, you might want to consider doing that with a Query.

/Claus Lundstrøm

Lamba · 2012-05-29

Thanks Claus for your kind help.

I have tried importing a report having layout and then tried to design it after clicking Upgrade Report.
The same error msg poped up saying u must upgrade the report.

clausl · 2012-05-29

Make sure the report is compiled after you have upgraded it. Notice that the Compile flag is cleared when you upgrade the report to NAV 7.

/Claus Lundstrøm

Lamba · 2012-06-01

Hi Claus,
From where can i get the Mergetool,
i have downloaded it from the following link:
http://www.mergetool.com/products/mergetoolhistory.html
It has 4 fob files that's it.

clausl · 2012-06-01

When upgrading to NAV 7, you will need to import "MGT1.30.32 NAV7 B33280.fob" as described in the "__README FIRST__.txt" :whistle:

/Claus Lundstrøm

Lamba · 2012-06-05

Hi Claus,
In one of the step of the upgrade process of NAV 7 says:
Import and run the TextFormatUpgrade2013.exe tool on the contents of the OldBaseVersion and OldCustomVersion folders to update all the references to forms to references to pages

What exactly it mean to say

1. To import the .exe in the objects of Old and custom objects and then it will create the references.
OR
2. I have to copy the .exe file to both the folders, and then run them, actually i have tried both the possible procedures,
but unfortunately couldn't find any result.

mohana_cse06 · 2012-06-05

Copy both files which are available under \\Dynamics.NAV70.IN.1155650.DVD\UpgradeToolKit\Object Change Tools into OldBaseVersion and OldCustomVersion folders and simply drag and drop the files on TextFormatUpgrade2013.exe..it will convert according to the rules in TextFormatUpgrade2013.exe.config file and create new file in new folder Converted

clausl · 2012-06-05

Or use the MergeTool to do this as I explained. I prefer to use the MergeTool to do this job.

/Claus Lundstrøm

mohana_cse06 · 2012-06-05

clausl wrote:

7. Export the just imported NAV 2009 SP1 objects with the check mark “Export with NAV 7 Code Conversion” and import the new text file into the MergeTool
8. Export the just imported Custom objects with the check mark “Export with NAV 7 Code Conversion” and import the new text file into the MergeTool

You mean with above steps?

clausl · 2012-06-05

Correct, at this stage we are using the MergeTool to help us upgrade the objects, so I just want to limit the amount of tools needed to upgrade.

Nice of MS to release the "TextFormatUpgrade2013.exe" tool, but would be nice if they did not spend time on tools already existing. :whistle:

/Claus Lundstrøm

Lamba · 2012-06-05

Can NDT 3.0 be used in this case for merging:
1. Nav 2009 Sp1 base
2. Nav 2009 Sp1 Custom
3. Nav 7 base
By creating a db by Nav 2009 and then opening it with NDT 3.0.
Then importing the 3 txt files which will provide a 4th required file,
with certain conflicts.

Lamba · 2012-06-05

Means except for Reports and pages it doesn't works :whistle:
Otherwise it can used?

clausl · 2012-06-05

NDT is not maintained anymore, so I would think not.

But maybe you could do this for Tables and Codeunits only, give it a try and lets us know the result.

/Claus Lundstrøm

Lamba · 2012-06-05

I am doing the same, lets hope for the best

DenSter · 2012-06-05

clausl wrote:

would be nice if they did not spend time on tools already existing. :whistle:

Funny Claus

DenSter · 2012-06-05

By the way, if you want to learn about how to use Mergetool, Per has a YouTube channel with lots of videos: http://www.youtube.com/user/Mergetool. There are also a couple of recordings of his Mergetool sessions at NAV Techdays last year, in the download section of this forum.

Lamba · 2012-06-07

I have tried using NDT 3.0, importing the 3 txt files:
1. Nav 2009 Sp1 base(Converted)
2. Nav 2009 Sp1 Custom(Converted)
3. Nav 7 base

a. The converted files doesn't have codeunits, these were available in fresh copies of both, i.e; in the unconverted files.
b. And after automatic merging the Fieldgrps were not transfered for almost 99 % of tables,(in automatic merging, i have unchecked the Change only custom objects, might be due to this).
c. The codeunits were of Nav 7 and there were no codeunits in either of the Nav 2009 files.

Lamba · 2012-06-08

Few Questions:
1. What are the cloud requirements if we need to setup Nav 7 on cloud.
2. And how it could be connected and configured.
3. Do we have to install the nav 7 Client at the user end or at cloud end.

Is there any link\ document to do so.

clausl · 2012-06-08

Hi Lamba,

These questions are no longer NDT related, so I suggest you open a new tread for these questions.

/Claus

mahesh · 2013-01-21

Beware of using NDT for NAV7 (2013) upgrade even for Table & Codeunits.
I faced serious issue. When i imported Text file of Base NAV7, all Page Variable (declared as Local or Global) were reflected as Record variable.

Automerging feature of NDT will also carry forward this and you won't see any conflict.
You will find issues during compiling. So you will be nowhere after this merging.

Hope, this is helpful.

Miklos_Hollender · 2013-10-30

clausl wrote:

/Claus Lundstrøm

Claus, you are beyond amazing! Put this into a blog post please and let's find a way for us to send you beer or something. Thanks a lot!

This is precisely this kind of all informaton in one place what is missing usually, they all exist elsewhere but in different places. Like blogs... Microsoft needs a Documentation Integration Manager role to pull all these together as a full time job.

Miklos_Hollender · 2013-10-30

clausl wrote:

Correct, at this stage we are using the MergeTool to help us upgrade the objects, so I just want to limit the amount of tools needed to upgrade.

Nice of MS to release the "TextFormatUpgrade2013.exe" tool, but would be nice if they did not spend time on tools already existing. :whistle:

/Claus Lundstrøm

The MergeTool can only be used with a partner licence, or the Solution Developer at €30K (I think). Just like data upgrade toolkits, which s*cks too. When you are a full time employee at an end user doing internal consulting and they bought you the €6000 Application Designer licence like they did for me this is a bit difficult to explain.

With this tool, I think I can do a manual merge, sort out the objects all myself and only give the data upgrade to partners. (Of course it would be very good if upgrade toolkits could be ran with customer / application desginer licence as well.)

Ravi_Thakkar · 2014-05-23

Hello Experts,

Thanks for such an informative conversation.

I just want one clarification: If I just want to Upgrade Data from NAV 5.0 SP1 (Technically Upgraded in NAV 2009 R2) to NAV 2013 R2 since there is no Customization, what are the major steps required for this ?

1) NAV 5.0 SP1 to NAV 2009 SP1 and then NAV 2009 SP1 to NAV 2013 R2 ?
or
2) NAV 5.0 SP1 to NAV 2013 R2 directly ?

Please, suggest.

Thanks in Advance.

postsaurav · 2014-05-24

Dear Ravi,

There are two steps for Same -

1. Technical Upgrade to NAV 5 to NAV 2009 / NAV 2009 SP1 / NAV 2009 R2. (NO Data Migration)

2. Data Migration (as you pointed no customization) from NAV 2009 / NAV 2009 SP1 / NAV 2009 R2 to NAV 2013 R2.

-- A Data Migration toolkit is available from Microsoft which can be downloaded from PartnerSource.
-- For Details of Toolkit and steps please refer -
http://saurav-nav.blogspot.in/2013/11/nav-2013-r2-upgrade-from-nav-2009-sp1.html

Let me know if any doubts.

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