mibuso.com

Hello!!!

Right now I returned from the NAV 5.0 presentation. It seems, like some good changes are ready for us. Brief description is on my Blog site (http://msmvps.com/blogs/kine/). For more info you can wait for the official presentation release, because I am unable to remember all things they showed us.

Please ask them one question...

Will NAV 5 be truly multilanguage? I mean Unicode UI and data.

My company has several implementation with English+Latvian+Russian data and UI. Now we have to use several PCs with different system(!) Reqional Settings because it's impossible to see and enter data in Latvian and Russian in same time.

Thank you in advice.

Could you also suggest to add the option to over receive on PO and warehouse. Have it setup so that you check and uncheck it. They have 4 months to deliver it. I'm sure they can do it.

Being able to over-receive is already a feature in 5.0. At least, it was in the version I saw in Directions.

Sorry, bad news for you... no, there is no plan to move NAV to Unicode. They told that it is better to use AX when the unicode is needed. I know, that this is not the answer you want to hear, but, sorry... (until there will be S/SIDE, it will be not unicode...)

That there are 4 months to release, it doesn't mean that they can change something in this release. The change/release cycle can take one year. Right now, the testers in MS are working on SP1 for 5.0 and as you know, the 5.0 is not released yet. It means, the development of 5.0 is closed now and they are working on SP1. It means, any changes they will do now, will be included in SP1 (if they will be critical) or in SP2, and it means may be beginning of the year 2008... . It is not like in you company, that you do the change and tomorrow the customer is using that. There is big testing procedure, documentation etc.

This all sounds great kine, I just like to remind of 4.0 SP2, and maybe it's not the case all the time. If you look at 3.6 version serial no disaster, 3.7 in warehouse mgt. 4.0 and SQL 2005. I'm just wondering what kind of testing they do.
My guess it's the same testing the way clients do testing of our code.

Unicode is something that Mogens Elsberg and Kim Iberfelt are seriously considering, but have no plans for in any of the upcoming releases, including 5.0 and 5.1. It's possible that this may be done for 6.0 or before Wave 2 is over, but as far as they know, Unicode hasn't really been discussed or implemented as of yet.

Of course, it would make a lot of sense to them so that they can widen their market exposure, especially in China and Japan, but they stress that this is not something small like a couple of lines of code in parsing. This is a fundamental feature in the architecture that has to be completely overhauled for Unicode to be incorporated.

Sadly...

21st century, a lot of multi-national companies, multi national data. But Navision's "multi-language capabilities" are just a marketing fake, almost useless...

Switch to unicode isn't so difficult than you can imagine. You just need to change several API calls and recompile app using double-byte strings and rewrite all texts. But big companies are scares by this switch. Same problem was in Borland with Delphi. They declined to do this, but some guy just rewrote all VCL in 3 month by his own, alone.



Quite stupid answer...

It is all about propositioning and marketing.

AX is for international working companies and NAV not. If you want to use NAV for that it is your choice not theirs.

But they are seriously considering it and the more requests they get for this the better. We have seen many propositioning changes for NAV in the last 18 months.

As for making changes in NAV, please take in mind that building a release for 50000 customers is not something to take easy.

As Kamil explained at NAV they work with release cycles, we have had quite an interesting chat about this with some MS folks at Convergence but unfortunately I never now about those things what is and what is not under NDA.

The Unicode-subject was (and is) sensitive to users. It has been submitted several times to microsoft by partners and customers. Do you really think that, if it isn't so difficult, MS wouldn't have foreseen it already?

I agree with Mark. It's all about focus.

And indeed, the more requests, to better chance you have it will be foreseen in one of the future versions.