NAV 2013 - An Open Letter to the NAV Dev. Team

jglathe · 2014-01-09

Hi,

generic wrote:

Upgrade to AX

:roll: When you're through upgrading (and burnt through 6 to 8 digits of cash), you will find that you still have this craptastic UI and even more complexity to deal with. Sounds more like a typical decoy project.

with best regards

Jens

einsTeIn.NET · 2014-01-09

Mark Brummel wrote:

Dit you see the report conversion battle between Clausl, Yaveon and 1Click?

Basically we choose the Clausl strategy to build the reports like they should for a fair price.

What does that mean? Could you point me to where I can find more about the different strategies?

Kowa · 2014-01-09

einsTeIn.NET wrote:

Mark Brummel wrote:

Dit you see the report conversion battle between Clausl, Yaveon and 1Click?

Basically we choose the Clausl strategy to build the reports like they should for a fair price.

What does that mean? Could you point me to where I can find more about the different strategies?

There is blog post here about it:
http://mibuso.com/blogs/clausl/2013/12/ ... ckfactory/

geordie · 2014-01-09

After almost 3 years and especially with NAV 2013 I started "enjoying" RDLC and I wouldn't come back to old report designer at all, I just find quite unbelivebable not to have an elementary feature such as manage justified text! (a proper suggestion was added in Connect 4 years ago!)

davmac1 · 2014-01-09

Inventory Valuation report - rewrite the NAV side to pass a smaller dataset.
The report curently gets all the detail but does not print it.
Still takes a while to run, but it does finish.

The other alternative is to use the example using SQL posted by ara3n a few years ago or some of the more recent postings.

The NAV dev team really needs to rewrite all the reports using their own report development principles.

Alex_Chow · 2014-01-10

Guys, those are work arounds. Not a solution.

Let me rephrase, how do you print a large dataset using RDLC? Answer, you can't.

This means that you cannot rely on RDLC for any meaningful financial analysis.

Thank God for Odata (which I still can't get it to work), Excel Buffer (still has its limitations), SQL (rewrite standard code using SQL), writing a .csv file (back to DOS days?).

jglathe · 2014-01-10

Alex Chow wrote:

Guys, those are work arounds. Not a solution.

My thoughts exactly. What's all the bling for when you can't get the job done?

with best regards

Jens

jglathe · 2014-01-10

Hi BlackTiger,

I always like the diplomatic side of your comments.

BlackTiger wrote:

Simple question - how much data average human can analyse(!)? Well trained? Not as much as some people think. There are only two reasons why some people ask for "large dataset" - lack of understanding and... lack of understanding. Customer requirements in first case and just requirements in second.
So... Just minimize your dataset. SSRS is not designed for "bring me something - I will check it later" concept.

Nice one. Do you get away with this in negotiations with a customer? There are customers that have quite a big pile of (useful) data which is mostly there to keep track of the (for them useful) stuff they have. When the newfangled technology craps out on these volumes, and the oldschool one they had before didn't, then there is no room for discussion left on what's wrong. The bottom line then is simply "not fit for business use".

with best regards

Jens

asmilie2b · 2014-01-10

@Miklos

Oh I agree with you. I don't use RDLC for everying, maybe about only 30% of our reporting needs. I find that for us at least, the sum of the tools available below meets our needs really well:

* RDLC - Anything that needs to physically print for external parties (e.g. document reports). Also, using it for any report that needs to be sent by email. Since 2013 we can't run automations locally, so we can't send excel buffer reports from the NAS.

* Excel buffer - Anything where having it straight in excel is convenient. However, since 2013 the excel buffer is very slow so now only using it for reports with small amounts of data

* OData + Powerpivot - Anything with a lot of rows needing analysis. (We use Odata for 80 % of our new reports).

Marije_Brummel · 2014-01-10

BlackTiger wrote:

asmilie2b wrote:

@Miklos
* RDLC - Anything that needs to physically print for external parties (e.g. document reports). Also, using it for any report that needs to be sent by email. Since 2013 we can't run automations locally, so we can't send excel buffer reports from the NAS.

* Excel buffer - Anything where having it straight in excel is convenient. However, since 2013 the excel buffer is very slow so now only using it for reports with small amounts of data

Really?

Both have been fixed. Exporting to Excel now uses officexml that is a. fast and b. runs on serverside without excel installed.

geordie · 2014-01-10

Mark Brummel wrote:

Both have been fixed. Exporting to Excel now uses officexml that is a. fast and b. runs on serverside without excel installed.

Fixed directly by MS or still need to create a custom Excel Buffer working with OpenXml?

Marije_Brummel · 2014-01-10

Fixed by MS.

geordie · 2014-01-10

Mark Brummel wrote:

Fixed by MS.

Good

Is there any KB around regarding it?

Marije_Brummel · 2014-01-10

It's part of RTM, out of the box, no hotfix.

mdPartnerNL · 2014-01-10

Mark Brummel wrote:

It's part of RTM, out of the box, no hotfix.

Not sure I understand this line? is there more info on this?

thegunzo · 2014-01-10

RTM = Ready To Market = Released Version.

mdPartnerNL · 2014-01-10

ok,

Fixed directly by MS or still need to create a custom Excel Buffer working with OpenXml?

So is there an example object available in NAV2013R2 with openxml?

Marije_Brummel · 2014-01-10

It is not openxml, but officexml.

Every object in NAV that uses the excel buffer uses officexml.

Check out the budgetting import/export features.

Alex_Chow · 2014-01-10

BlackTiger wrote:

Simple question - how much data average human can analyse(!)? Well trained? Not as much as some people think. There are only two reasons why some people ask for "large dataset" - lack of understanding and... lack of understanding. Customer requirements in first case and just requirements in second.

So... Just minimize your dataset. SSRS is not designed for "bring me something - I will check it later" concept.

Bro, have you not been following this thread? The answer to your question is the Inventory Valuation report. Another one is the standard Inventory to G/L Reconciliation report.

Customers want reports in summarized version, but want to have detail when they want it. This is the flexibility required.

mdPartnerNL · 2014-01-10

Mark Brummel wrote:

It is not openxml, but officexml.

Every object in NAV that uses the excel buffer uses officexml.

Check out the budgetting import/export features.

Just did. So as I understand it now the Excel buffer writes with openxml. After creating the file, excel is opened.

Marije_Brummel · 2014-01-10

Yup. And you are correct, it is openxml.

I did ask for some improvements regarding formatting etc. I hope they will implement that

asmilie2b · 2014-01-11

Hi Mark.

On those two points, sorry my description was wrong, what I meant for the first issue was that excel buffer reports cannot be sent from the NAS since 2013, which is my issue. Error given:

"Message: Microsoft Dynamics NAV Server attempted to issue a client callback to create an Automation object: 00024500-0000-0000-c000-000000000046 (Report 50091 TheReportName). Client callbacks are not supported on Microsoft Dynamics NAV Server."

For the speed, I just gave it another try, but running a report that exports about 80000 ILE's from 2013 takes about 30 minutes, in 5.1 it takes about 5 minutes. I was hopeful at your words. I might try sometime to make an open XML version of the excel buffer, but for now RDLC takes care of it.

Marije_Brummel · 2014-01-11

I'm sorry mate, but you must be doing something different from what I meant.

Your error message indicates that you have automation variables in your report 50001. This can never be the case if you use the excel buffer table (370) the way it is meant to be used.

Here is some background on the Excel Buffer:

http://dynamicsuser.net/blogs/mark_brum ... uffer.aspx

Once used properly it should run in the NAS in 2013 without having Excel installed.

Good luck.

asmilie2b · 2014-01-12

Many thanks Mark.
You were right, the report I use as a template has a couple of the automations for creating new sheets in excel, pivots, etc.
I will create a stripped down version of the template I use based only on the Excel buffer for the NAS. This is good news! My apologies for sharing a misunderstanding.

Miklos_Hollender · 2014-01-13

Mark Brummel wrote:

runs on serverside without excel installed.

Hi Mark,

This is important for me because I would like to go towards the direction of RDP only NAV access, no local clients installed. Makes upgrades, admin a lot easier. The problem is buying Excel twice, for the local PCs for everyday work and for the RDP server for NAV. So I am considering not having Excel on the RDP server. So exports still work this way? I assume OData doesn't.

Marije_Brummel · 2014-01-13

Yes, they told me that if excel is not installed NAV will export to openxml.

I asume ODATA does not work.

vasja · 2014-01-15

I found out that I cannot show vertical lines in tables in Nav2013 - lines that separate cells from each other. For the last couple of days I watched my users missing cells because they dont know WHERE THE COLUMN IS. This is ridiculous. Can you imagine excel without vertical lines?

Kowa · 2014-01-15

vasja wrote:

I found out that I cannot show vertical lines in tables in Nav2013 - lines that separate cells from each other. For the last couple of days I watched my users missing cells because they dont know WHERE THE COLUMN IS. This is ridiculous. Can you imagine excel without vertical lines?

I suppose that you mean NAV 2013 R2, since NAV 2013 still has them. Apart from that, I totally agree. It is an appalling situation that you have to tell the company accountant who is making his way through an endless confetti of numbers in rows and columns in worksheets and analyses each day of the week that these were removed, for no apparent reason. If these are not visible by default, there should be at least a property to reactivate them where you need these.

Marije_Brummel · 2014-01-16

Please keep this feedback comming in a constructive way.

This is good feedback.

Microsoft is reading this and I am in communication with them about certain issues in this thread.

mdPartnerNL · 2014-01-16

In a list page there is no first or last record button/icon. So if you open a page you need to switch-over to your keyboard with ctrl-end.

Try setting a few filters in a page... :-k and take a coffee

(sorry, couldn't help it)

NAV 2013 - An Open Letter to the NAV Dev. Team

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