Are customers complaining about the RTC..?

kine · 2010-01-18

Just about the accessibility - I thought that font size, color contrast etc. could be changed by Windows settings - special settings for high-contrast colors and bigger fonts etc... :?:

Marije_Brummel · 2010-01-18

I think the reporting is caused by being unfamiliar with the tools.

I had the same feelings to start with, but for one of my projects I had to create a pretty difficult report that would be difficult in the classic designer.

I was amazed by the possibilities of RDLC. You have to find the properties and the penny about how the dataset works has to drop at some point.

It is much easier to switch data accross the report in RDLC than in NAV and creating stuff like sums does no longer require keys etc.

RDLC seems not to be designed for ERP documents, that is for sure. Microsoft wil have to fix that in future versions. So far my blessing has been that my customers invoice changes meant removing, not adding controls.

Also keep in mind that RDLC (Should be) an industrial standard and that with time more people will be famiar with the tools.

As for the editor, maybe there are other freeware editors out there just like there are dozens of different compare tools. I think Navision starts up the windows default application for the RDLC extention but I might be wrong.

At this moment, and this is also what I write in my article, it is impossible for an end user to understand how to change a report in RDLC, but Microsoft is working on that and the ideas that are currently there for 7.0 are prommising (but under NDA ](*,) )

boywonder · 2010-01-18

Someone should close this thread and maybe delete some posts.

Now who is taking it too seriously

Actually - this is a good thread....because I am slowly coming around to the RTC.. :shock:

The RTC and the new Reporting are options after all, as long as C/AL stays I'm happy as a pig in ****

Stuart_Glasson · 2010-01-21

I hope they don't lock & delete the thread. It's a good read.

Marije_Brummel · 2010-01-21

Thanks Stuart.

You should request your MSFT logo @ Luc.

freddy.dk · 2010-01-22

Totally agree with Stuart - don't delete the thread.

We are reading and listening - in fact just last week we did a number of visits to customers running RTC to do UX studies on how they did, what they like and what they don't like - the good thing about the RTC is that we can innovate and make those things better without having to have all partners redo their pages once more - we are past a huge refactoring effort (and so are a lot of partners - but certainly not all) and from now on we can make the client automatically leverage larger or smaller monitors, run on sharepoint and a lot of other things because the metadata is clean.

I think the real value of the work going on towards NAV 2009 is still to be seen. That is of course no excuse for having things that isn't good enough.

CobaltSS · 2010-01-22

I can't resist.

Freddy, when did Redmond move to Denmark?

cheers,

David_Singleton · 2010-01-22

CobaltSS wrote:

I can't resist.

Freddy, when did Redmond move to Denmark?

cheers,

Marije_Brummel · 2010-01-24

freddy.dk wrote:

I think the real value of the work going on towards NAV 2009 is still to be seen.

I think we will also see the real problems in the future. Today it is already difficult to get a change in the metadata and with more client solutions like sharepoint this will be even more difficult.

We will see solutions that do not use all metadata properties which will be confusing for partners and customers.

Kowa · 2010-01-24

First of all: I totally agree with Miklos' posts in this thread.

My main concern is not what the RTC can't do at the moment or may be able to do in future, there are always some things that are better in the old system than in the new one, but the additional expense for an undefined period of time. At present we have to maintain pages as well as forms, the page conversion procedure with export and import is too slow (the whole IDE is neither here nor there at the moment), there are too many issues with complicated forms. All of this sums up to a considerabe amount of extra time which is needed in an upgrade. Even the plain installation process takes much longer than before. Who is going to pay for this? Small size companies either can't afford it at all or will turn away to look for some other software which may be less sophisticated but is still within their price range. The RTC usally makes a good impression in demontrations for existing customers, but if you tell them that in future their software budget will need some increase they will laugh at you (and rightly so).

I would have preferred the RTC to have it's own IDE right from the start and omit the support for forms alltogether. At least then you know where you are at, and, if your have informed your client about the consequences, can do one conversion procedure with no way back. Getting used a new syntax really doesn't take long if you know your whereabouts in the system, know how objects interact, what happens in posting routines and what you need to do if you have to adapt the system to the business processes of your client. All of this takes years to learn, and 95 % of this has remained unchanged.

Marije_Brummel · 2010-01-24

Kowa wrote:

...At present we have to maintain pages as well as forms...

I think this is where you go 'wrong', at least in my humble opinion.

Who told you that you 'have' to maintain both. Microsoft does, but you shouldn't.

Unless you are a VAR like Lanham or To-Increase selling small add-on solutions each partner could make a permament decision to move from forms to pages at one certain point of the development.

From that point forward your add-on is in the RTC.

I agree that maintaining forms and pages is to expensive unless you have enough customers paying.

I still do not understand where the idea comes from that implementing the RTC is more expensive and that the RTC has a higher Cost of Ownership for an end user.

The cost of migration might be high for a partner but that should not be paid by the first customer.

When you develop an add-on, the development hours should be posted as a fixed asset that is worth something. Then you start selling it and slowly you get a return on your investment. This is how a business works from making develping cars, real-estate and building software.

What most partners try is to get a customer to pay for the developent and then sell the solution to other customers. If this is your appoach then yes, you will have a hard time.

boywonder · 2010-01-24

What most partners try is to get a customer to pay for the developent and then sell the solution to other customers. If this is your appoach then yes, you will have a hard time.

This is what has worked so successfully for NAV solution centres for so long...so I think you have hit the nail on the head as to why the RTC is a problem for some!

Kowa · 2010-01-24

Mark Brummel wrote:

Kowa wrote:

...At present we have to maintain pages as well as forms...

I think this is where you go 'wrong', at least in my humble opinion.

Who told you that you 'have' to maintain both. Microsoft does, but you shouldn't.

If you want to get an older addon certified for Version 6 for you will have to provide both GUI's. Even if Microsoft could do without the classic GUI, if you relinquish to support forms it really boils down to having just the RTC GUI in future for all upgrade customers which means that you will have to tell them "sink or swim with the RTC, and if you don't like it go and look for some other ERP System". So if you don't want to affront them like this there isn't much of a choice.

I believe that the RTC actually could make upgrades a lot easier in the future because merging customized forms usually takes much longer than merging tables or codeunits, and pages as a sole GUI will probably be quicker to handle, if an improved IDE is provided. But the amount of extra work it creates at the moment may be too much, especially for smaller NSC's, to overcome the phase of providing two GUI's in which we are now.

Marije_Brummel · 2010-01-24

@ Kowa

Have you tried to Certify for Dynamics? Maybe I should not say this but partners I know only certified a very small part of their add-on just to get the logo. Then they go back and do the rest of the add on their own way.

The Logo is just for marketing.

As for the upgrade path, in the future there will not be much of a choice. Microsoft will definately not maintain forms forever and it will go faster than dropping the native database for sure (which should have happened years ago). If I could give any partner an advise, stop putting effort in forms. Today or yesterday, not tomorrow.

Marije_Brummel · 2010-01-24

boywonder wrote:

This is what has worked so successfully for NAV solution centres for so long...so I think you have hit the nail on the head as to why the RTC is a problem for some!

Yup.

Some partners invested all the money they made on their project in expansion or other things.

If you look around in the NAV market this is the time to clearly see the ones that are willing to invest. There is a good number of partners who have already moved their solutions to the RTC and implemented the first projects. Funny enough a lot of them are from the USA where Navision had a bad start and is strugling to compete against its sister GP.

generic · 2010-01-24

For most cases customers right now can implement classic or RTC, so you have to maintain both if you are a VAR or regular partner.

Reports take longer to write and while both classic and RTC are available, your solution has to run on both.

Upgrades are more expensive. You cannot argue with this.

A lot of VAR have not released their solution for RTC and it has been more than a year since it has been released. The simple reason is that it takes more time.

As for TCO for customer, until partners learn the product well enough to be able to do the same task as efficient as they do in RTC, there will be higher TCO.

For example installing RTC on 3 computer environment take more time. There is new technology involved that partners have no clue about.

Migration in software world from one version to totally new version is not an easy task and MS and NAV have always put more emphasis on backward compatibility. And it's great for partners and customers but for NAV it comes with extra work during the migration.

I think if they did a clean cut and stopped releasing the classic client for Customers, it would remove a lot of arguments.

If I were an existing customer, I would wait till classic client is no longer being shipped and then move to RTC, just do exe upgrade till it's possible to get the benefits of the IDE. I would like to hear some of benefits of using RTC over classic.

For new Customer, partners should just implement in RTC and learn the new tools.

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Are customers complaining about the RTC..?

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