Now that Dynamics NAV 2018 has been released, Microsoft has focused on ease of use, development of the Web client, and improvements on the backend.
New features in Dynamics NAV 2018
Notable changes include the web client layout design. It now enables users in web client to customize the layout in the client function. As well as adding fields and freeze panes, users can drag and drop fields between different fast-tabs, which is not possible in the Windows client. There are some nice visuals to see how the changes are going to look in the tablet and phone client modes too.
Dynamics NAV 2018 features other improvements in the web client, better more intuitive keyboard navigation for data entry on a built-in PDF preview that works in all clients (previously only worked in Internet Explorer). For more efficient updating you can now switch from one company to another in a multiple database, without signing out and back in. And finally, a new Application Program Interface (API) to integrate with other apps. All great features for web Client, that increase ease of use, but we will just keep on our wish list advance filters, saved views and zoom to be completely satisfied!
A number of features in functionality has been moved to core NAV or replaced by existing functionality in core NAV including:
Removed: System calendars / Accounting periods / Type of Supply
Removed reports: Stock Shipped Not Invoiced / Stock Received Not Invoiced / Unposted Sales / Unposted Purchases
Now part of core NAV: Day Book VAT / Customer / Vendor Ledger Entries.
Some of the new extensions shipped by Microsoft include:
The Image Analyser extension – it uses powerful image analytics to detect attributes in the images that you import for items and contact persons, so you can easily review and assign them. For items, attributes could be whether the item is a table or a car, and whether it is red or blue. For contact persons, attributes can be gender or age.
World Pay / Microsoft Pay – similar to the PayPal integration that’s already included in Dynamics NAV.
And some new functionality that has been added includes:
An Employee Ledger Entry. General Journals and Payment Journals have got a new option under Account Types of Employees to allow posting to the ledger. This could be useful for expenses and payroll.
User Tasks have been added. These are similar to “to-do’s” but are related to pages or reports rather than contacts, for example for assigning tasks to a team.
A range of pre-configured Excel reports have been added. These are all finance related and can be found on the Business Manager / Accountant role centres.
The report that changes global dimensions now splits the task into multiple “chunks” and runs them via the task scheduler, in parallel. For peace of mind and further efficiency it can also recover from failure without having to start from the beginning each time.
Users can now validate customer names and addresses from the VAT registration number.
The game changer
Extensions V2 (VS code and coined modern development environment) is a game changer for programmers with most future development now recommended to be done in V2 VS code. This may not seem to be of any real interest to end-users of the product, however they will benefit from this.
The benefit to end-users is that if your back-end NAV developers are developing in this new method, then the process to upgrade to newer versions once you have upgraded to NAV 2018 will be far quicker and easier. Microsoft’s ultimate objective is to enable Dynamics NAV Customers to upgrade to the latest releases of NAV without having to worry each time about a huge financial outlay or unnecessary downtime. There are other technological advances that allow the upgrade process to have less downtime for Customers as well.
