Directions EMEA is the biggest event in NAV community. This year Dynamics Development Center was a part of this exciting conference and we would like to share with you our thoughts.
Directions EMEA is the largest Dynamics NAV event in the world. This year’s edition took place in Prague on 12-14th October 2016 and gathered 1754 participants from 52 countries representing 588 NAV Partners. We were a part of this breakthrough event and would like to share our thoughts with you.
1. Microsoft confirmed its commitment to Dynamics NAV by emphasizing its strategic role in business applications portfolio. The newest release of the system: NAV 2017 will bring many interesting features (more details below) and will be followed by major releases every year still available as an on-premise solution. This way Microsoft wants to establish strong presence on both areas on the market:
- On-premise – mainly through Microsoft Dynamics NAV
- Cloud – maily through a new business application: Dynamics 365 (more details below)
2. What’s new in Dynamics NAV 2017
- As always at this part of the year the community gets excited about what new features the new NAV will bring. This year we were particularly taken aback by how closely NAV and O365 can work together. When you receive an email, just open your Outlook client and within Outlook you will be able to review recent orders of a particular customer (identified by an email address) and check their balance just to name a few options. If you receive an email from an unknown address (that doesn’t exist in NAV), Outlook will suggest creating a contact/customer in NAV. This way Microsoft wants to address one of the biggest challenges of contemporary workers – task switching, which can reduce performance by as much as 40%.
- This year you will be surprised how easy it is to connect your Microsoft Dynamics NAV application with O365 or Dynamics CRM. Just open Quick Wizard, provide your credentials and voila!
- There are new functionalities in Finance, Jobs and CRM – more details about it in a dedicated blog post.
- Additionally, Microsoft confirmed their commitment to Extensions. It is becoming the only supported way of introducing changes to the system. We already tackled this topic in the following post: http://www.dynamicsdc.com/en/blg/developer-changes-for-nav-2016
- There is a platform available (called PowerApp) which enables you to create new apps without writing a line of code. We will provide more details soon.
3. Dynamics 365 = intelligent business applications in the cloud
- At the conference it was announced that later this year Microsoft will release two new products: Dynamics 365 Enterprise Edition (combined functionality of AX7 and CRM Online) and Dynamics 365 Business Edition (partial functionality of Microsoft Dynamics NAV and partial functionality of CRM Online). It will mark the new era of ‘intelligent business applications in the cloud’ for Microsoft.
- Dynamics 365 Business Edition will have at its core ‘Financials’ app, which eventually will offer the whole functionality of Dynamics NAV Starter Pack. It will premiere in US and Canada on 1st November 2016. In 2017 the solution will become available on 4 European markets and after that stage will come to Poland. What will become available in Poland as early as 1st December 2016 is full CRM Online Sales functionality sold as Dynamics 365 for Sales (Business Edition). We will keep you up to date on this.
- Dynamics 365 Business Edition will be available exclusively as a cloud solution, which capabilities will be further enhanced by partner applications. Microsoft announced a very competitive pricing, which will surely make it an offer worth considering.
See you in Madrid next year for the 10th EMEA Directions conference!