Open letter to Microsoft from a NAV professional since 2.01

DenSter

Dear NAV team at Microsoft,

Enough is enough. I am sick and tired of all the complainers, the doubters and the haters. Don't think I don't have a wish list, and don't think I am not critical of the product, but I think it's about time that someone steps up and says "hat's off to a job well done" and applauds the things that are good about the direction you are taking the product that we all know and love. So here's me standing up and putting my hands together to a team of dedicated people =D> =D> =D>

Thank you for FINALLY moving forward. Thank you for finally making a clear choice for the future. Thank you for finally getting rid of old fashioned technology. Thank you for the vision that you had back in the early 2000's, and the incredible amount of hard work that you've put in to make this vision a reality.

Thank you for better reporting tools
Thank you for better page designer (and page preview!)
Thank you for two flavors of web services (SOAP and OData)
Thank you for .NET operability
Thank you for providing the option to have a variety of display targets for a single object type (pages)
Thank you for the Web Client
Thank you for the Sharepoint Client
Thank you for NAV on Azure
Thank you for unicode
Thank you for 64bit
Thank you for making SQL Server the only database option
Thank you for improving performance to the highest levels yet seen in NAV
Thank you for the Query object
Thank you for providing automated testing capabilities
Thank you for the new debugger (that we can actually modify!)
Thank you for making it easy to manage Service Tiers
Thank you for implementing Powershell
Thank you for NAS on the Service Tier
Thank you for the TAP and the Beta program

In short: THANK YOU!! =D> =D>

Sincerely,
Daniel Rimmelzwaan

Alex_Chow

I agree with everything you said except the reporting tool.

DenSter

I just don't understand how you can say that. The RDLC reporting capabilities are so much better it's not even close.

The classic report designer is so bad it was obsolete in 2000 when I first started working with Navision. We now have more controls, clickthrough capabilities, export to Excel and PDF, interactive sorting, more versatility in grouping, totaling, formatting, colors, etcetera, etcetera.

mohana_cse06

Thank you for the Role Centers
Thank you for the Charts

davmac1

Thank you for color and drill downs in reports. :thumbsup:

mdPartnerNL

NAV 2013 is looking better and better. Impressive.

Most of the options I understand but do you have more info on "NAS on the service tier". In what does it differ in functionallity?

Marije_Brummel

The new NAS is fully multithreaded. It can perform multiple tasks at the same time, thus in more companies.

This also affects the licensing model.

Alex_Chow

DenSter wrote:

I just don't understand how you can say that. The RDLC reporting capabilities are so much better it's not even close.

The classic report designer is so bad it was obsolete in 2000 when I first started working with Navision. We now have more controls, clickthrough capabilities, export to Excel and PDF, interactive sorting, more versatility in grouping, totaling, formatting, colors, etcetera, etcetera.

Yes, the capabilities is awesome. If we talk about capabilities, it's like comparing a Maybach to a Smart Four Two.

I have to admit, the more I program in the RDLC reporting, the more I enjoy it. The programmer inside of me really marvels at what it can do. You can do drill downs, colors, export to Excel (native!), document maps, etc. For example, having a report export to Excel I can do faster in RDLC than in standard NAV reporting.

The technology is great. And, we as a company, have adopted the new technology. Why? Because it's our job.

My whole problem with it is that the knowledge cannot be easily transferred to the end user that are not tech oriented. The old reporting, although simple, can be easily taught to the accounting users to make simple field changes or add new fields. RDLC, not so much.

Sometimes, a Smart Four Two is more than enough.

DenSter

mdPartnerNL wrote:

do you have more info on "NAS on the service tier". In what does it differ in functionallity?

I'm planning to make a video about NAS on the service tier, once I have some time. If you subscribe to my YouTube channel you should get a notification: http://www.youtube.com/user/DenSterClips

Tommy_Schou

Sigh!

Couldn't disagree more.

Will say though that the new debugger is great!

einsTeIn.NET

I just saw this thread and got instantly the same feeling I have with NAV. I don't like those simple adulations. I understand where you are coming from and why you felt someone needs to raise something positive in contrast to all those blaming posts here and in all the other communities. Adulation is no good, but also stupid bashing is no good.

I believe most people like the idea of the new technologies and features. And also they like a straight roadmap. What they don't like e.g. is when something should work in a certain way but it doesn't or they don't know enough about it to make it work. Or when something was very easy in an old version but becomes pretty complex in the new version. Or when they struggle with a bug... and so on.

In my opinion that's the reason for all these negative posts and I think that's quite normal. So, you shouldn't get annoyed by these post but consider them as part of the movement to the new technologies.

DenSter

I wrote this post in reply to another one that was unreasonably negative toward the NAV team. It's meant as a reminder to people just how much work those people put into improving the product that we work with, and an acknowledgement to their efforts.

No adulation here, just recognition of a job well done. This doesn't mean that criticism isn't in order, but instead of focusing on the negative I thought it was appropriate to focus on the positive and publicly say thank you for all the work that they DID do.