Inspire 2017: Microsoft offers Dynamics GP, NAV, SL 2018 release highlights

With over 200,000 customers worldwide, Dynamics GP, NAV, and SL maintain a global presence that Microsoft says it will not ignore, despite the attention being lavished on the newer Dynamics 365 product line. The company gave the three legacy SMB ERP products a combined twenty minutes of breakout session stage time at Inspire 2017 to offer partners the respective roadmap updates.

Dynamics GP 2018 is planned for release on December 1, 2017, and  will deliver an updated workflow engine that will add features like email reminders, reporting, and new approval options on some processes, according to product manager Pam Misialek. The platform's OData services will also be enhanced. And the team is planning to deliver a Power BI Content Pack and Flow templates.

GP's document attach module will expand to support more types of entities like receivables, GL entries, I-9 forms, and employee inquiries. And the user interface is set to add auto-complete in the web client and the use of Visual Studio Tools for interface customization.

The next release of Dynamics NAV, code named "Tenerife" will build in Azure-based cognitive services like the ability to identify images in context of the related entities. For example, a photo of an item can be analyzed to assess the category it would best fit into. Or a photo of an employee could be analyzed to determine the gender and age. Microsoft also demonstrated these capabilities in the context of Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations Business edition (D365FOB) at Inspire.

The Tenerife release will also add a series of new integration options. The Office 365 Bookings app can be integrated, bringing in customers and orders to streamline invoicing. The Dynamics 365 team also demonstrated this integration at Inspire and noted that PayPal would ...