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Customer, Partner Needs Will Influence Microsoft Dynamics GP Release Cadence in 2017 and Beyond

by Jason Gumpert
Editor, MSDynamicsWorld.com
June 08 2016

Snare Drum 

The Microsoft Dynamics GP team will continue on its two release per year cadence through 2016. But, the GP team has advised, customer, VAR, and ISV feedback could potentially change that plan in the future.

For now, the two release per year cadence continues to offer some real benefits, says Microsoft product manager Pam Misialek, who spoke with MSDynamicsWorld.com. In the case of the new Dynamics GP 2016 and the upcoming GP 2016 R2, the R&D team's agile development practices allowed them to release new "big rocks" like the web client, OData service, and Power BI capabilities, and then to plan improvements that would be introduced in the next few months.

"The web client, OData, and Power BI are going to be improved and are still in play," Misialek says, meaning they will continue to be key areas of development in the next release, even as smaller features are updated and introduced.

Many GP customers still cannot or do not want to stay current with annual or semi-annual product updates. But upgrading Dynamics GP is less challenging than other types of ERP upgrades, says Misialek. Still, she acknowledges the rapid release cadence can make some people hesitant.

"We're doing things to make it easier," she says, including taking measures like minimizing table changes, and trying to improve transparency on the choices for new and enhanced features by forecasting the focus on big rocks while promoting Microsoft Connect as the central point of input for smaller feature requests.

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About Jason Gumpert

As the editor of MSDynamicsWorld.com, Jason oversees all editorial content on the site and at our events, as well as providing site management and strategy. He can be reached at jgumpert@msdynamicsworld.com.

Prior to co-founding MSDynamicsWorld.com, Jason was a Principal Software Consultant at Parametric Technology Corporation (PTC), where he implemented solutions, trained customers, managed software development, and spent some time in the pre-sales engineering organization. He has also held consulting positions at CSC Consulting and Monitor Group.

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Arthur
Submitted by gtho on Wed, 06/08/2016 - 19:30 Permalink

I always try to upgrade to the latest release because MS has stopped releasing fixes to the old releases. For example, Field Service has at least 3 critical bugs in GP2013-GP2015 R2 and they didn't get fixed till version 2016 or at least were not scheduled to be fixed. I think MS needs to concentrate on fixing outstanding bugs instead of releasing new features which in many cases can't be used such as pre-payments on POs, try using that if you have an integration that uses econnect, you can't. Businesses such as the one I work for lose money and look like fools when they can't even quote out of Field Service because it affects backordered qtys and Bin level allocations. Why should we spend thousands constantly upgrading just to get a fix? I can understand upgrading to get a new feature but not for getting things fixed. Rant over, Arthur

In reply to by anonymous_stub (not verified)