I promised to myself not to post technical stuff on this blog. But as Seth Godin said not that long ago, never’s not such a long time. And also, why shouldn’t I share a piece of useful advice if I have it. So here it goes.
Have you ever started a lengthy NAV batch job, and then wondered how much longer it is really going to take? Me too.
I’ve stumbled recently upon a support request, where a partner asked if there was a possibility to register purchases of services in Microsoft Dynamics NAV. When it comes to selling services, such as consulting, or repairs, NAV is your true friend, because you can use Resources to register sales against them. However, purchase documents don’t offer a possibility of purchasing resources, so you are left to some workarounds.
Microsoft Dynamics NAV has a very consistent user interface, that helps user get used to it pretty fast. Yet it has its own ways, that aren’t so intuitive to most of typical business application users. There is one specific feature which causes a lot of confusion, especially with those users only starting to use NAV. It’s the data persistence: as soon as you enter something in a form, it is automatically saved, you don’t need to press any Save button. Nor is there any Cancel button to forget the changes entered.
Imagine that whenever you edit an object in C/SIDE Object Designer, and save it, the system automatically saves it in the version history. Imagine that it never simply overwrites your previous version, but keeps all of them there for you. Imagine that you can see all of the modified versions of any object, then make any version the current version by doing as much as a single mouse-click, no tedious imports and exports needed. Imagine that this is true for all of the developers on your team. Imagine that it is completely, fully automated.
When I posted my last relevant post on this blog, I’ve got a comment from infonote (a visitor) how bad it was that Microsoft Dynamics NAV can’t use a versioning system. Well, as the matter of fact, it can.
One of the nice things in NAV is that at any given moment, the development environment is just a Shift+F12 away. When you are a single developer on your team or on a project, this keypress is your best friend. But if there are other people on your team pressing it with an agenda, then this keypress might as well be a combination made in hell.