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Read more about the article Drag and Drop File Upload for Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2013 R2

Drag and Drop File Upload for Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2013 R2

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Yesterday evening I spoke at Dutch Dynamics Community event, on invitation by my dear friend Luc van Vugt, and the topic was control add-ins for NAV 2013 R2. Of course, this automatically meant that the audience should see more JavaScript code than C# or C/AL, and that it should be something both fancy and useful.

So how about this: you drag and drop a file onto an NAV page, and the file is automatically uploaded and stored in a BLOB field in the NAV database? And yes, it does the same no matter if you call it from the Windows or the Web client. And yes of course, no external components or dependencies needed.

As I promised, I would make all the source components available for download after the sessions, and if you just want to take the components, here they are, ready to download, install and abuse:https://vjeko.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/DragDrop.zip

If you want to know how this thing works and why, read on. Otherwise, just download the thingy, install it (the instructions are included with the file) and abuse it to your fancy.

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How Do I… Videos on MSDN

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imageMSDN has started running a series of the How do I… videos for Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2013 (feed here). The idea is to showcase a technical feature in 5-15 minutes. The project is still ongoing, but a number of videos have just been released and announced on the Microsoft Dynamics NAV Team Blog.

The project is a joint effort by Plataan and Microsoft, and I participated as a technical expert in charge of seven videos. I’ve already recorded five of them, out of which three are online.

You can find the links below, and please come back to this page as I’ll update it as more videos are published.

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Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2013 Beta Available!

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BetaI don’t know about you, but I think today is a great day: Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2013 Beta has been published on PartnerSource, and if you have access, you can download it from here.

I’ve been playing around with CTPs for more quite a while, and even though I can’t share any specifics, I can assure you: this is definitely the best release ever, technically, architecturally, functionally and from business value perspective. Whatever angle you take – this release is massive.

I believe I don’t exaggerate if I say that 2013 brings more news in comparison with 2009 R2, than 2009 brought in comparison with 5.0 SP1.

If you want to check more about what exactly is new, I suggest you read the white paper and accompanying documentation at the NAV 2013 launch portal, and I hope the MVPs soon get the clearance to blog about specific features. There are just so many fantastically exciting to-dos for this blog, about NAV 2013, that I’ll probably eat my fingernails – heck, the whole fingers! – in anticipation to be able to start.

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The Beauty and The Beast: NAV and .NET

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imageIf there wasn’t one already, someone should have invented Belgium. There are two things in this world that I love, and probably shouldn’t (and an oversized red speaker’s shirt I got from Luc today did a darned god job at concealing the unlucky consequences of overly indulging in both of them): beer and chocolate. Boy, do Belgians know their beer and chocolate!

But they know their NAV, too, and after NAV TechDays 2011, which have just ended in Antwerp, and two days of top NAV content, I can only say – great job, Luc and the team, and please make it a tradition.

If you attended my presentation about .NET interoperability, then there are a couple of demos I couldn’t deliver due to time constraints, and I promised to blog it. So, here we go.

It’s about streams. You already know that in NAV there are two data types, InStream and OutStream, that allow you to stream data in and out of generic sources or destinations. They are a fantastic tool, because they require you to know nothing about the type of source or destination, and you can store and retrieve data without having to care if the data comes from Internet, or a BLOB field, or is it written to a file, or transported over an XMLport. Stream makes it abstract and allows you to simply handle the data, and make the object itself care about the specifics.

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Countdown to Decisions Spring 2011

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imageAre you ready for Decisions Spring 2011 conference, which is bound to start in less than a week, right on your desktop? For the fourth time already it’s going to deliver cutting edge content, independent views and analysis, and an immense opportunity to network with your peers, partners, or prospects.

June 16 is the NAV day and if you are reading this blog, you should be there, because it delivers some top Microsoft Dynamics NAV content, including four MVP sessions and a keynote by Joshua Greenbaum, an industry veteran and one of leading independent ERP analysts and cloud evangelists, whose Enterprise Antimatter blog has inspired many (yours truly included) while it ran at ZDNet.

Make sure you don’t miss my session, either! I’ll present some pretty cool B2B scenarios, including live vendor price lists, transactional intercompany postings, smart requisitions, and more. See you in the Cloud!

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Decisions Spring 2011 – don’t miss it!

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imageThe countdown has started–it’s less than a month left to Decisions Spring 2011, the fourth virtual conference by MSDynamicsWorld.com. It’s again delivered from the comfort of your desktop, and you can attend all the presentations and mingle the expo booths in your pajamas and slippers, and nobody would care. Or know.

About the conference

This is what the conference site says about the event:

Decisions Spring 2011 is an independent conference about Microsoft Dynamics solutions organized by MSDynamicsWorld.com. This live online venue is free to attendees and supported by our sponsors. We build this event upon our leading online news and product information resources to provide a conference experience that provides the latest perspectives on Microsoft Dynamics AX, CRM, GP, and NAV.

Decisions Spring 2011 is simply the most focused and effective way to hear about real world Dynamics solutions and case studies and get practical guidance about the latest Microsoft Dynamics trends from the strategic and thought leaders across the Dynamics community. We bring together consultants, analysts, partners, customers, and more for an event that is educational, informational, and collaborative.

Don’t miss my presentation

Again, I was invited to deliver a presentation there, and this time I went for a tricky topic: business to business integration using NAV. My presentation comes with a flashy title “Harnessing the Microsoft Dynamics NAV Technology Stack for Streamlined B2B Process Integration” (a mouthful, I know) and you can read the summary by clicking here.

Make sure you don’t miss it, because there is going to be a quite cool demo in the end, showing how to integrate multiple NAV installations on process and transaction level, in two simple real-life scenarios.

NAV Day

The conference will be delivered over four days, each day being dedicated to a single Dynamics product (SL is the only product not being represented at the conference). NAV Day is June 16, and you can check the agenda here: http://decisions.msdynamicsworld.com/product/nav

There are going to be some quite interesting presentations, and four NAV MVPs will be sharing their knowledge and experience with you: Eric Wauters, Jörg Stryk, Rene Gayer, and yours truly.

Networking and meeting your peers, partners or potential prospects in the virtual expo room has always been fun and I’m totally looking forward to meeting you there!

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Are we “all in”?

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image“Are we all in” – asks Hunter Richards on The Software Advice blog in his Monday post, giving a view of Microsoft’s Cloud strategy in perspective of Microsoft Dynamics. He argues that while Microsoft is indeed betting heavily on the Cloud, its Dynamics line of products is not nearly ready for the Cloud.

In his argumentation, Hunter gives four challenges that Microsoft is facing, and that are main obstacles in Microsoft’s way to Cloud Dynamics ERP: architecture, multiple products, partner channel and market readiness.

I believe in the Cloud. And I believe in Microsoft Dynamics ERP in the Cloud. So I do not agree with Hunter’s views on this, and here I’m offering a counter view. Okay, I must say that my views are limited exclusively to NAV, so whatever I say applies to NAV, and may not apply to AX, SL or GP.

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Was it necessary to kill the Classic client?

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dinosaurAbsolutely.

The world needs to move ahead. The technology advances. Who doesn’t want to keep up with the progress, stays behind. That’s how it has worked since the dawn of civilization.

I can’t know the exact reasons why Microsoft has decided to stop support for the Classic client with NAV “7”, but I can offer my view and position on why I believe this was absolutely necessary.

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Death of Classic (C/SIDE) Client

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tomb_guardYesterday, during a coffee break at the What’s New in Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009 Technical for Application Consultants training in Vilnius, Lithuania (a fabulous place, by the way), a discussion arose around the destiny of the Classic (or C/SIDE) client in NAV. Some participants stated that “it’s never going to go away” because “Microsoft would not dare shutting it down”.

Unfortunately, it is going away, and quickly. Maybe it wasn’t too obvious at first, because Microsoft never actually said explicitly that “Classic client is going to be discontinued”, but if you read the latest Statement of Direction for Microsoft Dynamics NAV, it’s there.

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Keyboard shortcomings of RoleTailored Client in NAV 2009

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I am one of those people who only use keyboard with NAV. Classic, of course. Seriously, I can keyboard my way through NAV and do literally everything—and I am dead serious about the everything part of it—with only my keyboard. With Classic, mouse is quietly resting under piles of papers. In RTC, mouse is an active animal.

Yes, absolutely, this is the number one reason why I never adopted the RoleTailored Client and I still use the Classic one extensively. (Another one is a minor and an irrelevant fact that NAV 2009 still isn’t available in my region.)

So, in hope that this blog finds its way to the right address in Vaedbek, Denmark, I’m compiling a list of less-known or less used keyboard shortcuts that I use to navigate through Classic client, which mostly can’t be achieved (or can’t achieve exactly the same goal) in RTC.

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