NAV 2009 Book - more details on PACKT site

If you are interested in our book Implementing Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009, you can find a couple of things of interest on the PACKT web site.

First of all, there is the table of contents for the book.

Then there is an article based upon some of the examples in Chapter 7 called Extending the Application using Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009.

It's been a long year and as you can see from the table of contents, Vjeko and I have been very busy. 2009 promises to be a pretty exciting year as we start to see more and more people getting into the exciting world of Web services in NAV 2009.

For now, I would just like to wish you all a very Happy New Year!

A New Home for Vjeko's Blog

Way back in February of this year, I made a post about a blog that appeared on my Google Alerts for Navision that really caught my eye.

Now Vjeko's blog has moved to a new home: http://www.NavigateIntoSuccess.com. It has a new sleek look, new features, but the same fantastic content that has kept many readers returning again and again.

If the number of comments a blog receives is a testament to it's success then Vjeko has done extremely well over this last year. His articles regularly receive many comments from readers and he always takes the time to answer the comments.

Vjeko often writes in-depth, well researched, and informative posts on Dynamics NAV and Sure Step. I am a little biased, since we have just finished co-writing a book; however, if you are not already a subscriber to his blog, go and check it out. Now that the book is finished, we will both have more time for blogging and forum posting.

Where did my Web service go?

I was recently playing around with Codeunit Web services in NAV 2009 and after making a change which involved adding a function to my Codeunit, the Web service was no longer available for me to call.

I brought up the list of the services on my computer (http://localhost:7047/DynamicsNAV/ws/Services) and it was still showing in the list, but when I entered the URL for the actual Web service WSDL, I got an error.

It turns out, the reason was because one of the functions I had added to my Codeunit took an Automation object as a parameter. If you get this problem, the thing to do is bring up the properties for the function and set the Local property to Yes. Once that is done, the offending Function is hidden from the Web service and normality is restored.

Implementing Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009

What a great way to wake up! You can now pre-order our book. I woke up this morning to see that the link to pre-order the book with a discount was up on the PACKT site. Wow!

I have co-authored this book with my good friend Vjekoslav Babić, and I can see that he's been busy blogging about the book and letting everyone know. One of the reasons I have been so quiet in the blogoshpere and on my favourite forum over the last few months is because I've been working so hard to get this book finished.

We've really tried to make this book as informative as possible, while keeping the fun elements from our blogs. There have been some fantastic people involved in producing this book, with feedback from members of the product group and technical reviewing from seasoned NAV experts and bloggers (like Eric 'Waldo' Wauters). Thanks to everyone that has read this blog over the years and to those that have left the occasional comment.

The book is aimed at consultants and developers of NAV and gives an insight into the new features of NAV 2009, and also a series of tips and tricks and practical examples for configuring, modifying, and extending the application. I can honestly say that this is the best book on NAV 2009 I have ever written.

So what are you waiting for? Go and pre-order your copy now.

Dan Brown Loves NAV 2009 (and so do I)

Well done to the product team for getting NAV 2009 released to market. It's been a long haul for them and what they've acheived is truly remarkable. Dan Brown has made a blog post on the NAV Team Blog (read it here) in which he talks about the emotion that people attach to the new user experience and you should really go and read it if you have not done so already.

I've been playing around with NAV 2009 since the first release was made available to partners in May of this year. I'd seen some pretty cool videos previously and I was surpised to find the product looked just like the video and was fast and stable. The new Role Center approach is going to take some thinking from partners and initially introduces an extra step in the configuration process, but over time I can see this dominating the entire implementation process with the focus being more on the people in the organzation, the roles they play and the processes they need to perform and less on the data and the functions that are required to work on the data.

2009 is going to be a great year for NAV and I think it's going to be a whole heap of fun putting the theory into practice. Have you had chance to use it yet? If so, leave me a comment and let me know what you think of it.

Watch out for the Demo Install

I'm amazed at how simple the demonstration install of NAV 2009 is. Click one button and it goes ahead and installs everything you need. A word of warning though, if you use this option and you have an existing NAV version installed (such as NAV 5.0 SP1) then the Microsoft Dynamics NAV folder will get overwritten without prompting. You may find it worthwhile copying your Microsoft Dynamics NAV folder to another folder (such as Microsoft Dynamics NAV 5.0 SP1) before doing the NAV 2009 install.

He's Been!

Santa came early this year and he's left me a shiny new download of Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009. Yes that's right! It's finally here.

If you have access to PartnerSource, you can download it from the NAV 2009 Download Page.

I installed it on my home machine which is running Vista Home Premium with no SQL Server installed and I didn't really expect it to install. I ran the demo install and it just worked - it installed SQL 2005 Express, all the bits and created the demo database. I started the Microsoft Dynamics NAV Business Web Services service and the web services just worked!

Coolest thing for me? The date picker in the RoleTailored client on Vista is just so nice with animated zooming and swooshing and stuff. Nice!

Well done Microsoft NAV Product Group! This is a truly awesome version. I'm sure you feel like a well deserved rest after such a long haul.