Microsoft Dynamics NAV Upgrades: Avoiding the RDLC Report Conversion Crunch

As a Microsoft-certified Dynamics NAV Upgrade Center, we see a lot of upgrades at Liberty Grove Software. In recent years, those upgrades have been to NAV 2009. Increasingly, with the end of NAV classic reporting now in sight, many of our upgrades have involved the conversion of classic reports to their RDLC equivalents.

For those readers not involved in the technical side of Dynamics NAV, RDLC stands for "Report Definition Language Client". RDLC is part of Microsoft's SQL Server Reporting Services toolset and it is the new standard technology for Dynamics NAV reporting.  RDLC and classic reports are both supported in NAV 2009, but in NAV 2013 only RDLC reports will be available. So if you've already made the move to NAV 2009, read on to understand why you're in a great position to do your Classic-to-RDLC migration now.  If you're planning a NAV upgrade to 2009 or 2013, it is important to understand the report conversion process now to invest your upgrade dollars wisely.

 Understanding Your Report Upgrade Circumstances

If your company uses only Dynamics NAV standard reports, or standard reports with only minor modifications, you don't need to read the rest of this article. Microsoft provides RDLC versions of all its standard reports out of the box.

The only caveat here is that, if you've made minor customizations to standard reports, do not attempt to retain these customizations by carrying your versions of the reports forward in the upgrade process and expecting Microsoft's Create Layout Suggestion tool to make everything right. If you do this, you'll overwrite all the manual work Microsoft did to fix up the RDLC versions of their standard reports, which will cause you a lot of grief. You're much better off to manually reapply your minor customizations to the standard Microsoft ...