See what's coming in Microsoft Dynamics NAV 'Corfu': Foundations for new workflow, document management, E-services

Anyone not at NAV TechDays 2014 in November may have missed the latest update to the Microsoft Dynamics NAV roadmap, as well as some new ideas on the mind of senior product team members.

Microsoft MVP Mark Brummel alerted his readers to the roadmap information, which was part of the conference's keynote session and is available for download from Mibuso.

The next release of Microsoft Dynamics NAV, codenamed "Corfu", will be released in late 2015. Michael Nielsen, principal engineering director for Dynamics NAV, told the audience that Corfu will introduce new baseline capabilities around three functional areas: workflow, document management and OCR, and E-services integration. He described E-services as the trading  of electronic documents with other parties and the mapping tools required to transact them.

The new capabilities of Corfu will be more like "railroad tracks" than full-fledged capabilities, Nielsen said. He acknowledged that in the case of document management and E-services, there are already a range of capable ISV solutions that deliver advanced capabilities and that Microsoft expects partners to continue providing solutions in these areas and that they will be looking for partners to build upon the new capabilities.

The NAV development team is also working toward using a single code base across all user interfaces - mobile, web, and desktop client. The web client for Dynamics NAV could surpass the desktop role-tailored client in the next release in terms of its capabilities, Nielsen said. Like the tablet client today, they are planning to transform the web client ...