Looking Ahead: Microsoft Dynamics NAV 7 to Emphasize Improved Performance, De-bugging, Reporting Improvements

Microsoft Dynamics NAV 7, due out during the second half of next year,  will include performance, de-bugging, and reporting improvements that users have long been demanding, Microsoft NAV officials told a group of users.  

At the NAV User Group meeting, Forum 2010, a number of users urged Microsoft management to get the improvements out to the marketplace as quickly as possible.

Several  expressed concerns, for example, that Dynamics NAV doesn’t scale as well as required by fast-growing companies in the $100 million to $500 million sales range, which is NAV’s target market.  “You need to improve transactional volume," one user stated.

Transactional volume “is not measured in dollars, it’s measured in number of transactions,” which can vary from industry to industry, another user stated.

Another user suggested after the session that Microsoft's heavy focus on improving the user interface may have come at the expense of improvements in basic transaction crunching.

Improved de-bugging is another need several users said is very important. Brett Johnson, a Microsoft engineer present at the session, noted that there is a work-around, though it requires re-doing certain functions, and is thus more time consuming than many users prefer.

Improvements that will come in NAV 7 will be due in large measure to its reliance on Sharepoint, said Johnson of Microsoft  “The biggest feature is going to be the Sharepoint client,” according to Johnson. Sharepoint enables additional users to be easily added as NAV users by taking advantage of Internet connectivity.

NAV 8 due out in 2013-2014 is expected to provide further improvements in functionality, according to Microsoft officials. It will allow easier ...