You must have read about it .. but last night (my time – afternoon US time) at WPC the new upcoming version of Dynamics NAV was announced, together with the features and focuses of what we can expect. And lots of MVP’s have jumped on it, while (I have to be honest) I was comfortably sleeping ;-). Here you can find a few of their blogpost:
- Gary Winter: http://www.garywinter.net/2015/07/13/the-skys-the-limit-nav-2016-continues-cloud-integration/
- Mark Brummel: http://nav-skills.com/2015/07/13/dynamics-nav-corfu-will-be-named-nav-2016/
- Totovic NAV Blog: http://totovic.com/2015/07/13/nav-corfu-is-now-nav-2016/
- Saruav Dhyani: http://saurav-nav.blogspot.be/2015/07/microsoft-dynamic-nav-2016-yes-thats.html
And probably, I’m forgetting a few.
All of the above shared this slide:
Which says it all, doesn’t it.
The product name: Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2016
And not NAV 2015 R2.. . This was to expect. Also, if you look at the slide above, you can see that it’s indeed quite a major release.
BUT…
This has some consequences on your CfMD certification! As far as I know, CfMD counts for 2 major versions .. I might be wrong in this – and I actually sincerely hope I am – but this means that everyone that was certified (CfMD) for NAV2013, will have to go through this shizzle all over again.
Or not … let’s hope there is some kind of upgrade-procedure for already-certified-partners.. . The only thing you can do for now is … start looking into this .. .
Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2016 overview
Let’s put all this CfMD stuff aside .. and focus on that good things. Because there are many good things to look into! Lots! In fact, when you look into what Microsoft is promising to release, you have to think by yourself: “How on Earth do they do this in such a short time??” Let’s lift a few points from this slides.
Test automation suite available to partners
You might have read my blog about the PowerShots that we did. Well, one point on this “road to repeatability” was the testability framework. And one very big point was: Microsoft is using it themselves, but are not releasing it to partners. Well, the only thing I can read from this is: Microsoft Listens!
Let’s go back to the question above: how on Earth do they release so many things in such a short amount of time? Well, the test framework sure is one of these reasons. Thousands of tests that can be automated, and run every day .. and all these tests will be available to YOU! YOU will be able to use and build upon these tests. Remember my hint to start to automate them ;-).
Azure
As you can see, we will be able to use the Azure SQL in NAV2016. How cool is that? We don’t have to put the database on a VM with SQL Server anymore (which was quite pricy) .. We will be able to put it on Azure SQL, with all the benefits that comes with this as well. This is (in my opinion) a MAJOR step to the cloud as well! In fact, when you look at this slide that was presented at WPC …
we can only assume that the Dynamics products are going to have a MAJOR role in the cloud-strategy of Microsoft. Or, like Paul White once said: Microsoft Dynamics NAV has become the ERP cornerstone of Microsoft’s
cloud offering. I guess he meant that ;-).
Functionality
In this release, lots of new functionality is coming. I’m talking about Workflow (how long have partners been wanting this?), Electronic Invoicing, OCR (yes, indeed), and – let’s think of this for a moment – the “ability for third partiers to add in their own data sources (for example: exchange rate lookup)”. Well – that’s a broad description – and to be honest, I don’t really know yet how to look at this, but it sounds promising to say the least, doesn’t it ;-).
And a lot more…
CRM Online
Good one! Have you all been using the CRM integration in the previous releases? I tried .. and I hated it! It wasn’t flexible .. or just say .. it wasn’t useable at all. We didn’t .. and started to use scribe to integrate with CRM. Now, it seems that there is going to be an out-of-the-box solution to integrate with CRM Online – which obviously makes a lot of sense ;-).
Phone Client
Well – this was to expect, wasn’t it. But I’m excited about this. In my opinion, there was a higher use or need for a phone client than there was for a tablet client. Well .. we will have them both! 
….
I can only guess there will be lots of (blog)posts in the very near future. Look out for all information that will come on the “interweb” (how Richard Rawlings calls it) .. I will too ;-). And on top of that, there are the conferences as well, which I only can recommend to go to. Looking at the agenda above, you have all the reasons to go to:
See you there!
Release date
Well, this I couldn’t find anywhere, so I guess it isn’t announced just yet. The only thing I could find is an unofficial “this fall”. Well – that’s a time range of three months, but at least, it implies that it’s going to be released this year, doesn’t it ;-)? But let’s not confirm anything we don’t know .. so as far as I am concerned: “release date unknown” 