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Comments
Partners had 3 years from 2009 to 2013 and even before that to build their solution around RTC.
Nobody is forcing current client to upgrade. They can stay on classic till they stop support for it. Maybe by then RTC will be good enough.
It's a bit late talk about this.
Independent Consultant/Developer
blog: https://dynamicsuser.net/nav/b/ara3n
The RTC has been out for three years, and NAV 2013 is such a big improvement that in my opinion surpasses all other versions in every way (yes including reporting, although I agree that it is complicated). The NAV 2009 Classic Client will be supported until I think it was 2017, nobody is forcing anyone to go RTC today. That's a total of 8 years that you have to migrate to a supported solution, how much longer do you need?!? It just means that official support ends, you can still use the system just like there are customers still on 2.5. If you don't want to upgrade, nobody is forcing you. I just don't understand how you want more time, isn't 8 years enough time to migrate?
Microsoft is clearly moving forward, has been very open about it for years, and you better get on board or lose out. If your argument for not upgrading is "F2 doesn't work the same anymore, and my arrow keys are all screwed up", well then you're just missing the point, and there is no point arguing.
<edit>I think I made exactly the same point as Rashed
RIS Plus, LLC
Why are people still banging in data that was produced from another computer?
If we eliminated that, then we would only be entering exceptions.
I don't order from Amazon over the phone.
I realize that some processes will stay manual, sometimes for social reasons, but then you need good navigation and fact boxes more than heads down data entry.
http://mibuso.com/blogs/davidmachanick/
agreed. However, making interfaces that work (even for the exceptions, or at least give you a good way to handle them) is an expensive task. In a lot of cases it doesn't make sense from a business perspective. Or else everybody would be using EDIFACT.
As for fast data entry and fact boxes (or a navigation pane, for that matter): IMO, those steal precious workspace. What is worse is latency in the data entry... or having to use the mouse for some special (periodic) action that can't be reached by keyboard navigation.
with best regards
Jens
So, basically we are not trying to upgrade the old solution but rebuild some of its functionality in RTC. In the end the solution will be more close to NAV standard than the old proprietary solution, it will have much better data quality and more users will be trained up-to-date. That means if you do your upgrade this way then it's more or less the consideration of costs against advantages. I think in almost every upgrade case from very old NAV versions it's worth to think about not doing an upgrade of the solution but doing something like a re-implementation in RTC.
I agree that some users will miss the shortcuts and their normal way of working, but most users are screaming for new technology and accept that this will entail changes in the way they work today.
Every company still faces the exact same questions when deciding whether or not to upgrade. It great to point out all of the differences between the versions, what you can and can no longer do. But for the customer, it still comes down to one question: Does this version of the product have the features the company needs? If yes, they can choose to upgrade. If no, they can either wait for another version, change their processes / customize to meet existing ones, or move to another product.
http://dynamicsuser.net/blogs/mark_brum ... -pane.aspx
I personally have used his idea successfully to save user keystrokes.
http://mibuso.com/blogs/davidmachanick/
- NAV2009 was (IS) the hybrid solution for a gradual client UI change
- Technology is changing and NAV team is doing a huge effort to keep the client update (i don't know other solutions but...does SAP support multi platform, out of the box, client? Does it expose new webservices just by entering a single row in a table?Does it look like the same as the other programs commonly used by users, like office package?)
- There's a performance boost in the new versions, and it's not all due to the changes in the posting routine: I'm not a sql expert but i think that moving to a single database platform and a single client will give a big advantage, because we don't need to support different client behaviors anymore. I'm just thinking about renaming the records: did you notice that it's lightning fast in the rtc? I guess there's something "behind the scenes" that makes a client behave differently than the other. Having one single client is making microsoft able to adapt the data management perfectly (we hope).
- heads down data entry: you can use excel, copy the lines and then move to any worksheet page and hit ctrl+shift+v. Is there something faster?
"Never memorize what you can easily find in a book".....Or Mibuso
My Blog
So NAV needs to move on it all looks great to me too, but let's not kill the classic forms option until the page is comparible. It's just not here yet..
I think it's just impossible to convince you...
I don't want to convince anyone that the newest release is bad, it's great :0 Im explaining a situation where opportunities of new customers or upgrades are lost until we find a fix for the lost options in the form and will of course update all existing customer licenses to the 2009 version, if not already done...
You do the same thing that other add-on companies do when the product changes. You adapt your solution. I don't think the add-ons that have to parse the code exported as text said "Oh, all the properties changed names from Form to Page, our solution is worthless now." They changed their solution to work in the new environment.
Again, at minimum 4 years to find a work around, more than 5 for a lot. Between all of the existing options, new .NET availability / add-ins, etc., you're saying there's not a single way to do what you need to do? I haven't heard anything that a work around doesn't exist / couldn't be written for yet. If it doesn't work out of the box like you want it to, customize it so that it does. That's the whole point of having such a customizable product! ](*,)
I don't think anyone else with a different opinion is mad, or worse. I will respect your opinion if you respect mine. =;
Mark can't convince me because I couldn't find a fix or a workarround for some form options. Below are some that are ok or still open. Please correct me if i am wrong but keep this discussion nice.
Issue: In Form: F2 option to revalidate
Solved in RTC: use ctrl-x-ctrl-v
Issue: In Form you can use the arrow keys to go to other fields
Solved in RTC: use the TAB key to go to the next field
Issue: Can't switch between the header and lines with a key-combination
?
Issue: OnFormat isn't triggered anymore with the option to change color/font depending on a database value
? .NET?
Issue: Date input
?
Issue: Can't create a new or modify a record with only function keys (as I understand it)
?
I just tabbed my way to the lines without any trouble. Is the problem that you can't use the down arrow? You can customize the order of the fast tabs on the screen to decrease the amount of key clicks. I really don't see much difference between the two clients here.
Yes, you can use a .NET add-in to do this, and you get way more options. There are some good examples out there of exactly how to do this.
The only thing I've seen about dates are the date abbreviations. Is that what you mean? I've never met a user who uses anything other that T for today, but the other ones like F for Friday seem to be working fine.
Why does it have to be a function key? Ctrl+Ins and Ctrl+Del work fine to insert and delete. Thinking it has to be a function key is just an old way of thinking.
the others have been pointed out by Matt, I'm done
PS: I think we're going off topic. And propably your concerns ar not limited to your last questions...you have probably many other features you want to have in your client that maybe already exist, maybe not.
"Never memorize what you can easily find in a book".....Or Mibuso
My Blog
=D>
Thank you! I knew there was a shortcut for this, but I could not remember it. Even used google to find it! (And it's probably on my blog
So this replaces CTRL+PgUp and CTRL+PgDown
Mark, this is unrealistically optimistic. It should, but it doesn't always. Stuff happens. Someone forgot to write a batch-update batch job or for example you have a stingy client who does not like to pay for such stuff. Or it does not even worth it because there are only a few record. Or for example when you get these questions that how comes X did not automatically go into Y and you have no idea of course because when you try to reproduce it does, so you just reply revalidate it and then forget about it. Yeah, such problems would not happen in an ideal world. We don't live in an ideal world. People need workarounds. "The software should just work." is something I really don't expect you saying, I would expect it is something a bad customer would say. We all know it doesn't and we can't always manage to 100% stretch ourselves to fix all aspects of it all the time exactly when it is needed - there are always constraints. So sometimes people need workarounds.
This is actually an excellent idea! How about a purely textmode client, Norton Commander style? The advantage would be, other than speed of data entry, that such GUIs are very well scriptable with something like AutohotKey, so it opens up customizatons/automations outside Navision. For example back then when my friend needed to import Excel Item into textmode SAP R/2 he wrote an Excel Macro that generated a series of keystrokes and he imported it that way, not needing to hack SAP itself. That was quite cool.
OK let's discuss this as well. Who is the typical user? You sound like you swallowed Microsoft's ideology that the typical user is someone who is just casually entering some records or looking up data and well used to other MS products. But I think the typical user is like an accountant or warehouse dude entering data all day who is used to either a textmode Unix based or if more modern company for example a Delphi-based accounting software. I mean it is fairly obvious to me that the ERP oroduct should be for a totally different audience than for example Outlook so it does not need to be standardized. It's like standardizing a huge truck with a motorbike. Consider a shop floor with blue-collar workers entering output and scrap. They never seen Outlook.
In the long run I don't see it as a big problem because on this service-based architecture we will see more productivity-based and more computer-illiterate-user-based clients popping up. The idea of building a textmode client just sounds better and better the more I think about it
I think Microsoft's view is that we should not be using humans as data entry machines anyway but use bar codes or EDI etc. but in reality, we often have to. I hope there will be one day a world where nobody is going to beat the keyboard all day like a human machine but this world is far away. Even we lucky people living in first world countries eliminate "human input devices" in a decade or two, it will still linger on in other places where labor is cheap from Ukraine to India.
Funny how almost every power user I ever knew would really prefer doing everything in Excel and uploading it afterwards. I always resisted it but I am not so sure anymore... is it possible to call a web service from VBA for field validation?
do someone read my posts?
or isn't this what you mean, Miklos?
PS: YES, IT DOES VALIDATE
"Never memorize what you can easily find in a book".....Or Mibuso
My Blog
Ok, let's agree to disagree.
Endusers at my customers don't know F2.
Davmac1,
you are perfectly right from the viewpoint of the comfortable, rich first-worlder. But maybe you don't see the world from your own privilege. In fact now that I am living in Austria I sort of see less importance of "human input devices" because labor is so expensive that we rather automate it and it is obviously the good way forward. But I remember my time in Hungary and projects in other poorer places like Ukraine and this just doesn't work this way, there is no money for automation, human data entry is cheap, and yes they order on the phone. Because the customer refuses using a computer at all or at most e-mail. Or just because fsck you, I am the customer, I do as I please because every company is on the brink of collapse and need money badly so they accept anything. This is the reality what the non-rich part of the world needs to deal with. Oh and in poorer countries managers don't even trust employees so the most important part of an implementation project is to make sure nobody can see any kind of information they don't need. I don't see much of this here in Austria, but the subsidiaries in poorer countries... I see a lot of it. Not even just Eastern Europe or Asia, even in Spain I saw a company demanded a German consultant to make it impossible to copy-paste data out of Navision... and even in Switzerland, not particularly a poor place, I saw plenty of requests of removing one extra keystroke from the data entry process, because it was 1 lady entering the papers written by 50 computer-illiterate construction workers, so efficiency did matter. I don't know how such things in America work... are construction workers computer-savvy and enter timesheets and material usage in handheld computers? This just sounds too expensive and too difficult over here.
As for the fact boxes and navigation, dunno, I am starting to think that even in the more comfortable places of Central Europe we might be a bit backwards compared to America but the whole philosophy of Microsoft ads and the typical user Microsoft or you talk about - who spends more time looking up information than entering it, sharing information alongside the organization, having users well-versed in Office products etc., likes to see a sales graph while enters an order etc., highly educated and somewhere halfway between worker and manager, a truly professional person - just doesn't "click". We have a big divide in employees. Basically we have an inner circle of administrators who focus more on entering data and they are not interested in sales graphs or the kind of information factboxed provide, even Navigate is something they only very rarely use, and then we have an outer circle of managers, salespeople and engineers who don't use Navision at all - partially because licences are expensive but also because they do not see it as their job much like they do not see it their job to drive a truck or operate a lathe or do anything like this.
I mean I look at the Microsoft advertisement videos when even warehouse folks look like having an MBA and excellent Office skills and they are more concerned about working smart (looking at graphs etc.) than working hard and I don't see this kind of world around me. Maybe we are backwards. But this is the reality we deal it. I absolutely agree that your reality is a better world. But we must deal with the kind of reality we have.
Thanks I missed this post, thanks again. This is actually very clever. Actually you just gave me a good reason how to convince users to upgrade. Well done! This will single-handedly convince the accountants and the purchase assistants with their parts lists.
Too bad being at an end-user I don't participate in the beta program, I would so like to try this out
While I am definitely a pro-Microsoft person, I didn't have to swallow anything. It just made sense. I'll say it again, #1 complaint you hear about every piece of software: It's too complicated or it's too hard to use. That will probably always be the case, but I think it's great to see a company make an effort to do something about it. Maybe it's my background of educational technology / interface design that gets me excited about it, but to me it's one of the smartest moves they could make. They are doing their best to try to find a way to reduce the learning curve and I applaud them whether it works out or not.
I suppose it's different there, but the majority of the users I work with are not heads down data entry, or anywhere close to it. Not even the finance users I deal with are like that all of the time. The clients I have moved to the RTC haven't lost productivity vs. classic. Most of the companies I work with those groups (accountant / warehouse) make up less than 10% of the user base. The users I support are people that do use Word / Excel / Outlook / SharePoint / etc. The warehouse employees are using handheld scanners and don't even see NAV most of the time. The people in NAV are mostly in sales and purchasing, or finance and accounting. I don't work with manufacturing companies often, so it could very well be different in that type of environment.
I suppose my point is you can't generalize the product based on any one person, company, or region. The users that you work with, that I work with, and that every other partner works with all have different needs. Your typical user is not others' typical user. That's probably why they bought NAV in the first place, to customize it because they are not typical. We all make generalizations about what and where we think the software should go based on what we know, but none of us knows the whole picture. Some users will be negatively affected, some positively, just like any other change.
The complete user interface was very well thought out. Almost everything was reachable by hotkey, which interestingly (mostly) didn't change on the transition to Financials, Attain, MS Dynamics NAV CC.
Yeah, it's the past.
I don't see the difference between countries that you describe. And I also don't see these two kind of users you mentioned. You know I'm working for an end user, too. And we've got subsidiaries all over the world. Even in asian or eastern europe countries there's no user who wants to enter data heads down. I mean sometimes they do, of course, if there's no other quick solution, independent from the country. So, I think this has nothing to do with the employee costs. If you ask the user himself if he would like to have an automatic solution, I would suppose he would say yes. And if you ask his manager he would also say yes because the user could focus on other work or could be fired (manager thinking
I totally agree with you that there are some users that need the possibility to enter data in a very fast way by shortcut. Clicking and entering and clicking and entering and clicking and entering is just to slow. But in my opinion that's because the users get used to their work and the application (NAV) and don't want to waste time on processes they absolutely understand. Not because of costs of "human entering machines" or because of less education or something like that.
I mean in former times everyone needs to use coffee grinders to make coffee. Today most people (even in those poorer countries) use coffee dispensers and don't care any longer if the beans are powdered enough. That means people understand the process to make coffee and now just search for faster ways to get one. (I know that there are still some persons that use the old way because of tasty reasons, but that's another topic.)
RIS Plus, LLC
Oh, wait there is.
My spoiled rich American users can run the way they want to and the poorer workers in other countries can run the way they need to.
(Until they become as rich as us or we become as poor as them.)
http://mibuso.com/blogs/davidmachanick/