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- Herausgeber: Packt Publishing
- Kategorie: Fachliteratur
- Sprache: Englisch
So, your company has made the wise decision to use Dynamics NAV as its main business software for all its enterprise resource planning. Dive in and learn the ins and outs of the software from a development standpoint and unlock the software's full potential.The book will walk you through creating an application from start to finish. Once you know how to create a working application that users can access, you will have the knowledge and the resources needed to create other applications based on the tutorials covered in this guide.You will start by obtaining a free trial version of Dynamics NAV and then be introduced to the world of analyzing and deriving user problems into a requirements list. Finally, you will be shown how to use the software to knock out these requirements.
You will learn everything you need in order to begin creating your own applications, from translating the user's requirements to creating and modifying your system applications. Use Dynamics NAV's capability to create an application and address the user's needs, while also learning best practices and simple solutions.
"Getting Started with Dynamics NAV 2013 Application Development" will help you on your way to becoming a great developer!
Das E-Book können Sie in Legimi-Apps oder einer beliebigen App lesen, die das folgende Format unterstützen:
Seitenzahl: 193
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013
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Table of Contents
Getting Started with Dynamics NAV 2013 Application Development
Getting Started with Dynamics NAV 2013 Application Development
Copyright © 2013 Packt Publishing
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.
Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the author, nor Packt Publishing, and its dealers and distributors will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by this book.
Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all of the companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.
First published: May 2013
Production Reference: 1160513
Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.
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ISBN 978-1-84968-948-9
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Cover Image by Marcus Grandon (<[email protected]>)
Credits
Author
Alex Chow
Reviewers
Daniel Rimmelzwaan
David Roys
Bill Warnke
Eric Wauters (waldo)
Acquisition Editor
Joanne Fitzpatrick
Lead Technical Editor
Neeshma Ramakrishnan
Technical Editor
Worrell Lewis
Copy Editors
Aditya Nair
Alfida Paiva
Sajeev Raghavan
Laxmi Subramanian
Project Coordinator
Shiksha Chaturvedi
Proofreader
Paul Hindle
Indexer
Tejal Soni
Graphics
Abhinash Sahu
Production Coordinator
Pooja Chiplunkar
Cover Work
Pooja Chiplunkar
About the Author
Alex Chow has been working with Microsoft Dynamics NAV, formerly Navision, since 1999. Over the years, he has conducted hundreds of implementations across multiple industries. His customers range from $2-million-a-year small enterprises to $500-million-a-year multinational corporations.
Over the course of his Dynamics NAV career, he has often been designated as the primary person responsible for the success and failure of a Dynamics NAV implementation. His extensive career in the Dynamics NAV business is evidence of his success rate and expertise.
With a background in implementing all the functions and modules in and outside of Microsoft Dynamics NAV, Alex has encountered and resolved the most practical to the most complex requirements and business rules. Through these experiences, he has learned that sometimes you have to be a little crazy to have a competitive edge.
Believing that sharing these experiences and this knowledge would benefit the Dynamics NAV community, Alex writes about his journey at www.dynamicsnavconsultant.com. He also founded AP Commerce, Inc. (www.apcommerce.com), a full service Dynamics NAV service center, in 2005.
Alex lives in Southern California with his beautiful wife and two lovely daughters, and he considers himself the luckiest man in the world.
About the Reviewers
Daniel Rimmelzwaan was born and raised in the Netherlands, and moved to the USA at the end of 1999 to be with his new American wife. In Holland, he worked as a Microsoft Access and VBA developer. While looking for a job as a VB developer in the USA, he was introduced to Navision by a “VB Recruiter” and was intrigued by the simplicity of its development tools. He decided to accept a job offer as a Navision Developer with the firm intention to continue looking for a “real” developer job.
More than 13 years later, having been involved with all aspects of NAV implementations, Daniel is still working with NAV. He currently owns his own business (RIS Plus), where he does business analysis and solution design and is enjoying his career more than ever.
Ever since he started working with NAV, Daniel has been an active member of the online communities, such as mibuso.com and dynamicsuser.net, and online forums managed by Microsoft. For his contributions to these communities, Daniel received his first of eight consecutive Microsoft Most Valuable Professional Awards in July 2005, which was just the second year that the award existed for NAV. Microsoft gives the MVP award to independent members of technology communities around the world, and recognizes people who share their knowledge with other members of the community.
Daniel has also worked as a reviewer for Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009 Application Design, Mark Brummel, Packt Publishing and Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009 Professional Reporting, Steven Renders, Packt Publishing.
Daniel lives with his wife and two kids in Michigan, USA.
David Roys works as a Dynamics NAV consultant and programmer for Intergen, and in his spare time he writes novels about people who work with computers. He co-authored one of the first Packt Publishing books on Dynamics NAV and has gone on to read and review a number of their publications. David has his suspicions that no one reads the biographies of technical reviewers, so to prove him wrong, you should go and like his Facebook page http://facebook.com/DavidRoysAuthor. You can read David’s blog on NAV at http://teachmenav.com/blogs/dave.
Bill Warnke has been working with Microsoft Dynamics NAV as an IT Administrator tasked with creating an integration between NAV and an existing mobile invoicing solution since 2006. He was hooked on the rapid development, all-in-one environment, and the integration capabilities of NAV. Since then, he’s worked exclusively with Dynamics NAV.
He works for ABC Computers, Inc., a NAV reseller and Microsoft Gold Certified partner based out of Waupaca, WI. He is part of the ERP delivery team, and works on new NAV implementations, upgrades, and integrations. Find out more about what they have to offer at www.abc-computers.com.
He tries to maintain a blog presence at www.billwarnke.com, but his wife and daughter (and dog too) have slowed that down.
Eric Wauters (waldo) is one of the founding partners of iFacto Business Solutions (www.ifacto.be). With his 11 years of technical expertise, he is an everyday inspiration to its development team. As Development Manager, he continually acts on iFacto’s technical readiness and guarantees that he and iFacto are always on top of the latest Microsoft Dynamics NAV developments.
Apart from that, he is also very active in the Microsoft Dynamics NAV community, where he tries to solve technical issues and strives to share his knowledge with other Dynamics NAV enthusiasts. Surely, many among you will have read some of Eric’s posts on Mibuso.com, Dynamicsusers.net, or on his own blog (www.waldo.be), which he invariably signs with “waldo”. A few years ago, he co-founded the Belgian Dynamics Community, a platform for all Belgian Dynamics NAV users, consultants, and partners, enabling knowledge sharing and networking. His proven track record has entitled him to be awarded the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) for Microsoft Dynamics NAV consecutively since 2007.
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Preface
Let me start out by saying congratulations on your decision to work with Dynamics NAV. When I started working with Dynamics NAV (formerly known as Navision) back in 1999, Dynamics NAV was nothing more than an accounting system out of Denmark. After a couple of releases, acquisition by Microsoft, and a couple more releases, Dynamics NAV has become a full Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software with rich functionality. With every release, we see technical and functional improvements. And they’re not yet done.
At the time of writing, the Dynamics NAV installation base was 94,000 companies (http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics/erp-nav-overview.aspx). No other ERP software for the small and mid-market comes close to that number. In addition, Dynamics NAV has a wide range of add-on solutions that are available. Most of these add-ons are built directly within the Dynamics NAV environment with the same user interface. So, by using these add-ons, your company would not need to learn any other new software. One of the main selling points of Dynamic NAV from the very beginning is the ability to customize it exactly the way you run your business. Because of its flexibility, you can find a lot of tutorials and explanations on how to develop specific tasks, but not a lot of tutorials on how to create a project from scratch.
To get acquainted with the Dynamics NAV environment, it’s important for the user to create an entire project from start to finish, not just a specific element, but everything from understanding the business problem, designing it, developing it, and integrating it to Dynamics NAV. By doing so, the user can understand the power (and the danger) of customization and speak on the same terms when consultants are making recommendations on customization.
Your company has made a wise decision to use Dynamics NAV as its main business software. But what good is the world’s most powerful software if you don’t know how to use it? Dive in and learn the software from a development standpoint and take the initial steps to unlock the software’s potential.
This book will walk you through creating an application from start to finish. Once you know how to create a working application that the users can use, you will have the knowledge and the resources needed to create other applications and fill in the blanks with additional resources that are published on the Web.
What this book covers
Chapter 1, Getting Dynamics NAV 2013 on Your Computer – For (Almost) Free, teaches you where and how to download free copies of Dynamics NAV. We will walk through the installation and configuration of Dynamics NAV on your computer so that you can start playing around with it. We will also explore using Dynamics NAV in the cloud environment to bypass the installation process altogether.
Chapter 2, Getting Familiar with Dynamics NAV 2013,will go through and highlight some areas to begin navigating around the system. We will learn the design concepts for Dynamics NAV and how to personalize the settings for our session.
Chapter 3, Exploring the Data Structure and Basic Layout of Dynamics NAV,explores how the data flows within the most commonly used modules in Dynamics NAV. We will look up, drill down, and drill across the application to find the information we’re looking for.
Chapter 4, Determining a Task List, will look at some of the requirements for our fictitious company and show you how to create a task list for the project.
Chapter 5, Finding Similar Functions for Inspiration, explores the power of Dynamics NAV to customize a solution to fit our needs. There is not much customization that you will do that has not been already done before. In this chapter, we will examine the requirements from the users and find existing functions in Dynamics NAV to model our solution after.
Chapter 6, Creating the Application – Tables, will teach us how to build custom tables for our project to satisfy the task at hand. The tables are the starting point of every custom application that you will build in Dynamics NAV. We will reference the existing Sales Order function as the basis of our custom application.
Chapter 7, Creating the Application – Pages and Reports, allows us to add, modify, and delete the information without having to use the table itself. We discover how to create pages for the users to interface with the data. We will also create reports so that we can get meaningful outputs from the data entered.
Chapter 8, Extending Our Application, helps us add additional functionality to our tables, pages, and MenuSuite to improve user experience.
Chapter 9, Dynamics NAV Modules to Address the Specific Needs of Your Business, explores the additional capabilities of Dynamics NAV as a comprehensive ERP solution for the mid-market. The setup in the demonstration database can be quite overwhelming. This chapter will give us a glimpse of the advanced modules in Dynamics NAV so we can understand the functionality out of the box.
Appendix, Additional Resources and Conclusion, will examine the additional resources related to Dynamics NAV. This book will help you get started so you can quickly get up to speed in Dynamics NAV. If Dynamics NAV is something you’re interested in, and you’re hungry for more in-depth information, you will find some places you can go here.
What you need for this book
For this book, you will need the following:
Who this book is for
This book is for any user whose company has bought or has plans to buy Dynamics NAV as their main business software. This is also for any developer, who may be familiar with another accounting software, but who wants to get into the Dynamics NAV field.
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If there is a topic that you have expertise in and you are interested in either writing or contributing to a book, see our author guide on www.packtpub.com/authors.
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Chapter 1. Getting Dynamics NAV 2013 on Your Computer – For (Almost) Free
"Try them, try them, and you may! Try them and you may, I say." – Dr. Seuss, Green Eggs and Ham
This chapter will walk you through downloading and installing Dynamics NAV on your computer so that you can try out the software without having to hire external consultants or piece together online information.
Whether you're getting into Dynamics NAV because you're interested in a profession in this field, or because your company is interested in using Dynamics NAV as their ERP system, trying the software before you make the commitment will ensure you're making the best decision for you and your company.
There are three components that are needed for you to get into the development environment in Dynamics NAV. They are:
The installation files can be downloaded for free. The installation files come with the full development environment. They will install almost everything you need to work with Dynamics NAV. The files are the same for a single-user installation and a multinational corporation.
To create and modify reports in Dynamics NAV, you will need to have Visual Studio installed on your computer. Dynamics NAV uses the RDLC reporting method, which means the reports do not get processed on the SQL server; rather, it's processed on the server where the middle tier is installed. The last part of going into the development environment is getting the proper license. Yes, you can download the software for free, but the license will cost you some money in terms of an MSDN subscription.
