Understand the new approach to Microsoft Dynamics NAV updates, users told

If you're upgrading your Microsoft Dynamics NAV application, you need to keep a few things in mind like the changes to the release cadence and the structure of future updates.

At a recent online meeting of NAVUG, Martin Nielander from the Dynamics NAV product team presented some information about the release cadence for Dynamics NAV going forward, and highlighted the product roadmap. He also offered some advice for you keeping current with the product and reducing your effort with future upgrades.

For one thing, the release cadence for Dynamics NAV has changed.

"In the good old days we released a major release every three or four years," he said. "And we might have a minor release like a service pack every second year. But now we're going to release either a major or a minor release every year, typically in October. And service packs are not really done any longer because we have done these cumulative updates in their place. They come out monthly and they roll up everything that has been released so far."

A cumulative update rolls up released hotfixes, regulatory updates, and existing business process enrichments, and it always includes all previously released cumulative updates.

There are different processes for scoping these releases, Nielander said.

For major and minor releases there are a huge backlog that we revisit every year to see what needs to be done. And we also follow different market trends to take scope changes into consideration," he said.

Nielander said cumulative updates are mainly based on the different support cases Microsoft receives.

"So all those hotfix requests we receive from partners and customers are fixed, tested and put into ...