Extension

brimfred

I have a customer that recently started using NAV 2016.

This customer will need rather much customization now and in the future.

The system is currently almost clean except for some minor changes in standard objects because of few addons.

My question is following, is there any benefit of doing all new customization for this single customer via extensions instead of doing it the old way?
Or should extension only be used for horizontal solutions?

Thanks!

mohana_cse06

I suggest to use events in new customizations which will reduce modifying standard objects.

ishwarsharma016

Extensions is the way in which all customization will be done in NAV in future. Like Mohana suggested, use events to customize your system for now. And when the customer decides to upgrade, you may pack these customization in extensions.

Extensions is not applicable only on horizontal solutions but for each and every solution going forward. So you may do it now itself OR you will have to put in effort at the time of upgrading.

Extensions in NAV 2016 is more of a preview of what actually extensions model is capable of. In NAV 2017, capabilities of extensions will be highly increased.

Go with events for now instead of customizing system in the old way.

Kishorm

The only problem with this is that it looks like there are still teething problems with events as reported by @marvax and @ishwarsharma016 in this very recent post...

forum.mibuso.com/discussion/67693/big-problem-using-events-in-nav2016#latest

ishwarsharma016

@Kishorm these problems will be resolved eventually by Microsoft. But if we developers do not start using events, we will have to put in a lot of effort in upgrading from 2016 to the next versions.

As it is pretty clear, it is going to be all extensions from NAV 2017. I agree with the fact that there are a lot of limitations at the moment but a lot new capabilities will be available soon.

Kishorm

@ishwarsharma016 agreed but if you need to ship a product out now then hoping that it will get fixed at some point is not much help.

As you noted in the other post, you encountered this issue in CU 5 (although it could have been there much earlier - even in RTC) and the issue is thill there in CU 12 - so that's at least 8 months where this issue has existed but not been fixed.

I'm not saying stay away from extensions completely, I'm just saying beware that there are still issues with it - and I'd class not firing events consistently as a fairly serious issue.

mohana_cse06

Microsoft must have fixed it or we might have noticed similar issue more times here and there.
there must an issue with environment or setup or whatever but may not be issue of product. I have created so much code with events and extensions but never faced such issue.

Kishorm

@mohana_cse06 I have been using events too - I hope these turn out to be user/environmental issues rather than intermittent client issues

ishwarsharma016

@mohana_cse06 Agree with you. @Kishorm The code which I was talking about in the other post was a custom publisher and subscriber!

postsaurav

If you haven't started the project yet then I would suggest going for NAV 2017.

Reasons Being -
1. Extensions are more powerful in NAV 2017.
2. Expect More inbuild Events within the system from Microsoft.

I wouldn't worry much about extensions as of Now, but will suggest as others already did - Customize NAV with Events and Subscriptions.

Reasons -
1. An extension is just the way how you pack and ship your solution.
2. You cannot build an extension if you haven't followed Event and subscription while customizing NAV.

+ There is no such limitation with an extension that they can only be used with Horizontal or Vertical Solutions.