Microsoft Shows Off Improved Office 365 Tie-Ins for Dynamics NAV 2017

Microsoft will offer a range of improvements to the way Dynamics NAV 2017 integrates and interacts with productivity tools like Excel and Outlook, and the NAV team has even built out a business integration to the new Office 365 Bookings apps for the upcoming release. These areas of new or incremental improvement have produced some of the most positive reactions from NAV professionals in attendance at Directions 2016 North America this week.

Outlook integration

NAV 2017 will use two primary means of surfacing operational data and actions in Outlook email. NAV's integration, via an Outlook add-in, adds an extra pane alongside regular email content that will render the relevant NAV page interfaces (based on the NAV web client) in context. So a user can view data related to a contact, order, quote, or vendor in the context of an email from one of those parties and to take the next relevant action with bi-directional accuracy.

The second key interface mechanism is the "Document link" link or mechanism that shows up in Outlook on both emails and meeting invitations when the NAV add-in for Outlook detects the mention of a NAV document in a communication. Clicking on that "Document link" action just above an email brings the NAV content into full view, and the user can work on it (i.e., update the details of a quote) from within Outlook.

When an email from a vendor is received in Outlook, NAV tries to identify any invoice ...