Former Microsoft Dynamics NAV Managers Launch Reporting Startup ForNAV

Recently, Michael Nielsen, Microsoft's former director of development for Dynamics NAV in Denmark, and a perennial supporter of the Dynamics NAV community, left Microsoft after 28 years to start his own company, ForNAV.

Nielsen co-founded the venture with two of other veterans of the NAV community, Jan Sillemann and Jacob Reinholdt Rasmussen.

Launched officially on September 1 but operational since August 1, ForNAV's mission is to make it easy to work with reports. The Reports ForNAV Converter is a reporting tool aimed at giving Dynamics NAV partners and customers the best experience possible when upgrading Classic reports to RDLC (report definition language client), Nielsen says. The converter enables reports developed for Dynamics NAV 5.0 and NAV 2009 (also known as "Classic" or C/SIDE reports) to run on Dynamics NAV 2013 and newer versions that require the RDLC format.

"Traditional reports printed on paper, PDF reports that can be saved and/or emailed, and PDF reports that are simply previewed on your screen," according to the ForNAV website. "When it comes to converting, maintaining and developing reports for Microsoft Dynamics NAV, we are totally committed to giving Microsoft Dynamics NAV partners and customers the fastest and easiest experience possible. Nothing more, nothing less."

So Far, So Good

The company's value proposition is that Classic reports can be upgraded to Dynamics NAV 2013 and newer versions by just upgrading the business logic and not having to touch the layout, Nielsen explains.

Currently, more than 60 partners worldwide are doing final testing of the company's converter product, and the results are quite positive thus far.

"As far as Michael is telling me, the list of things to correct is zero right now," Sillemann says. "But we want to ...