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[Sue Whitney]

Hello NAVUG Community,

I’m looking for responses to be part of the upcoming On-Topic article in the Q1 2017 issue of NAVUG Magazine. Please include an answer to the question below to be included in the upcoming issue:

What do you feel is your greatest opportunity or challenge in 2017 as it relates to your organization and Microsoft Dynamics NAV?

You can post your answer here or email me directly at Sue@navug.com.

Thank you!
-Sue Whitney, NAVUG Magazine

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Sue Whitney
Dynamic Communities
Alexandria VA
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[David Machanick]

As a partner, our greatest  challenge is learning and taking advantage of all the new NAV 2017 features while still supporting and enhancing all the NAV versions that have been released in the past 10 or more years! 

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David Machanick
Sikich LLP
Garland TX
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[Matt Traxinger]

A major challenge is whether or not to invest in moving as much custom code as possible out of the base NAV objects and into custom objects / functions that utilize Events. There is no new functionality gained by doing this and it may take a couple of upgrades to see the ROI, but it is the better long term option.

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Matt Traxinger
NAV Developer
ArcherPoint Inc.
San Antonio TX
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[Greg Kaupp]

I think moving clients to Azure and taking advantage Azure SQL is one of the biggest opportunities and challenges we have with NAV 2017.  With Azure SQL the economics are so compelling that it just doesn’t make sense to buy servers for NAV anymore.  With Azure SQL you can scale performance up and down as needed along with point in time restore to any restore point within the past 35 days. Deploying on Azure also makes it’s easier for the partner to set up the ClickOnce client installation, the web client, and Universal App client.  Monthly costs for a typical NAV client are less than $400 per month for an Azure VM and Azure SQL which make it very affordable.  

The challenges for most NAV clients is that it will require thinking differently about how they deploy NAV.  For clients with larger databases there is the challenge of the time required to move their NAV database to Azure SQL.  Also multiple file groups are not supported on Azure SQL which requires some prep work on the front end before trying to move an existing NAV database to Azure SQL.

My guess is the days of spending money on hardware and SQL licensing will quickly become a thing of the past with NAV 2017.

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Greg Kaupp
CEO
ArcherPoint Inc.
Minneapolis MN
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[Ben Baxter]

I think one of the greatest opportunities with NAV 2017 is the common code base with Dynamics 365 for Financials.  With the R&D spend from Microsoft largely focused on Dynamics 365, it means NAV will equally benefit.  New features such as the deeper integration with Outlook, with the ability to quickly access Contact/Customer/Vendor information, used to only be available using a CRM platform.  As this was a main feature of Dynamics 365, the NAV community also gains this great out-of-the-box NAV feature.  The more they build out for 365, the better our Dynamics NAV product will get as well.  It is a win-win for the NAV Community.

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Ben Baxter
Consultant
Accent Software, Inc.
Carmel IN
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[Devang Mehta]

As a Microsoft Dynamics NAV Partner, our top 3 challenges for NAV in 2017 are:

1. Shifting our focus to cloud-based NAV deployments leveraging Office 365 and Dynamics CRM. This is a paradigm shift for most partners and customers. We are no different. Most of our implementations have been on premises.
2. Leveraging our IPs and participating on Appsource. We are not an ISV, so typically we don’t publish our apps. However we would like to start engaging with the Appsource.
3. How much resources we spend on training our development team on Extensions. This new development platform requires some additional education for our staff and the reward may not be received for some time. 

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Devang Mehta
NAV Practice Manager
InterDyn BMI
Elgin SC
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