A few weeks ago, I was in Copenhagen, Denmark to participate in the second Software Design Review (SDR) for NAV ‘7’.  The agenda is made up of multiple sessions where product managers and developers from Microsoft interact with select partners on functionality they plan to incorporate into future releases—a very iterative and productive process.  Unfortunately, I am unable to elaborate on the details of NAV ‘7’ , but the sessions did inspire me to write this blog.

I have been working with Dynamics NAV since version 2.6 when Dynamics NAV was marketed as “business your way.” Back then, Steve Ballmer made statements like, “I want to be Denmark.” This referenced the success of vertical solution offerings based on Dynamics NAV in Denmark, and therefore, a business model Microsoft needed to replicate worldwide.

After concluding the SDR, I really had to ask myself whether the current Microsoft Dynamics tag line of “People-Ready™” really does the NAV product line justice.  I kind of like the old messaging, as I think it better promotes the capabilities of NAV.  In fact, I predict that there is going to be an increase in the number of organizations not only using NAV as an ERP product, but adopting the underlying Dynamics NAV framework as a development platform.

Microsoft develops NAV based on these five basic values:

• Simplicity
• Productivity
• Continuously take advantage of Microsoft technology
• User experience leadership
• Rapid time-to-value

From what I could tell, NAV ‘7’ stays true to every one of these values. I look forward for when this version is available, so Serenic can continue to take advantage of the underlying NAV framework to further enhance or build new accounting software solutions for our nonprofit market.  Some really cool stuff is making its way into the underlying framework!

Until then, as a current (or future) nonprofit, NGO or public sector organization using Navigator, I might suggest that you consider expanding the vision of what this framework can do for you. Serenic and our partners have many nonprofit clients who have utilized the base Dynamics NAV framework within Serenic Navigator to incorporate functionality that displaced internally-built Microsoft Access, Excel or other 3^rd-party solutions, thereby enabling a more truly integrated overall solution—this premise being that you have a centralized development environment and can deliver a unified user experience (our most recent 2009 version made this proposition even more appealing).

I don’t know that people will be standing in line at midnight like they did when Windows 95 was released, but the future looks bright for the Dynamics NAV camp and I would suggest that any investment in the NAV framework will be supported well into the future.

It’s looking like a busy next few months for Serenic—but we’re not complaining!  Below is a list of trade shows, conferences and annual meetings where you can see the financial management and business operations software options provided by Serenic.  Check if Serenic will be coming to a town near you!

Charity Finance Director’s Group

May 18, 2010
London

• Covers key strategic and operational issues you will face, as well as innovative strategies that other charities have adopted in order to position themselves optimally on the long road out of recession.

Directions EMEA 2010

May 19 – 21, 2010
Prague, Czech Republic

• Focuses on strengthening and enhancing Dynamics NAV channel community, including NAV Partner communications & the relationship with Microsoft.

InterAction Forum 2010

June 2 – 4, 2010
Washington, DC

• Connect, Influence and Engage with hundreds of professionals, organizations and peers representing the international non-profit community, government, corporate and philanthropic sectors.

AICPA National Not-For-Profit Industry Conference

June 17 – 18, 2010
Washington, DC

• Provides critical training and the latest updates on auditing, accounting, tax, management, operational analysis and new strategies to enable the Not-for-Profit community to survive in this economic climate.

InsideNGO

July 12 – 16, 2010
Washington, DC

• Three separate NGO events covering: 1. Finance, Grants & Contracts 2. Cross Operations and Technology 3. Human Resources

AZA CFO Seminar

August 25 – 27, 2010
Seattle, WA

Association of Independent Research Institutes (AIRI)

September 26 – 29, 2010
Washington, DC

• An opportunity for AIRI members to network and get in touch with the top decision-makers at non-profit research institutes across the country.

Diocesan Fiscal Management Conference (DFMC)

September 26 – 27, 2010
New Orleans, LA

• More information coming soon!

Directions 2010

October 3 – 6, 2010
San Diego, CA

• Focused 100% on “Charting the Future” with Microsoft Dynamics NAV and its partners. Content created on partner feedback, providing best practices as well as interaction with peers.

A lot of information to take note of, but we will keep you updated as each trade show approaches!  Either bookmark this post, our follow us on Twitter and/or our Facebook Page—hope to see you there

Serenic Software was pleased to once again be a part of Microsoft Convergence 2010 as a Bronze Sponsor.  The event was held on April 24-27th in Atlanta, Georgia.  Serenic employees Lisa Ramsey and Bill Wilson were joined by AVF’s Jeremy Fass to staff the booth.  Speaking of the booth, Serenic’s new booth graphics were instrumental in getting passerby’s to stop and take a look, with lots of great feedback!

An upbeat buzz covered the show and sessions with new and old attendees created excitement about NAV 2009 and the continued progress of Microsoft Dynamics in general.  Attendees had the chance to dive into products – new technologies, new skills, new features and new knowledge and were able to see how the new, innovative technologies Microsoft is creating will influence not only how we conduct business but how we will function in the world.

Traffic was high with more leads coming in the first 24 hours than all the leads collected at last year’s show!   New potential prospects and partners were discovered and old friends were reacquainted once again .  A special thanks to our customers that took time out to visit us at the booth!

As always, the evening after events were quite festive.  The main event was held Monday night at Opera—only the hottest nightclub in Atlanta.  A good time was had by all and let’s just leave it at “what happens in Atlanta stays in Atlanta!” Serenic looks forward to another incredible 2011 Convergence—and if you attended Convergence 2010, we’d love to hear about your experience! Feel free to comment here, or share you story on our Facebook Page!

NGO Connection Day was an awesome chance for nonprofit organizations to come together and learn more about nonprofit technology.  We were able to interact with many other organizations and participants, making new connections and partnerships throughout the conference!  The best part about this nonprofit summit was—of course—the sneak-peaks from Microsoft and other technology solutions; being able to discuss technology trends in the not for profit industry allowed for awesome networking and sharing of best practices.

Our very own, Lisa Ramsey, happened to get interviewed by Matt Rothman from Tech-Tips about Serenic and our services.  Check out what she had to say—and what he had to say about her accent —in the video below:

Hope everyone enjoyed this nonprofit summit—let us know your thoughts by commenting below!

We recently hosted some HCM Payroll training at our Lakewood Office.  Thanks to our trainers, Quiana and Robb, folks went home with the skills they need to implement payroll—which fully integrates with Dynamics NAV!

Pictured below from left to right are Robb, Serenic Instructor; Carla Dudley from Finley & Cook;  Michael Persichini from Aztec Systems; Matthew Ball from Tervis Tumbler; Quiana Willard, Serenic Instructor; Jeremy Vyska from Small Square Services.

HCM Payroll Trainers and Attendees

As the exclusive developer of payroll products for Microsoft Dynamics NAV, we’re sure to see the class again.  Thanks for coming!

By Brandon Taylor

Last year, when Serenic made the decision to join the Microsoft Dynamics NAV 6.0 SP1 TAP (technology adoption program), there was that brief moment of, what have we done? As an embedded solution, Serenic Navigator is roughly 30% larger than base Dynamics NAV.  That translates into a lot of work, and we were aware that there was a lot that we didn’t know when entering the program.

As discussed in my last posting, there ended up being three primary areas that we really needed to understand: menus for the role-tailored client, roles and activities, and pages.

Let’s break these down.

Before jumping right in, I would like to apologize as the following contains development rated material – screenshots of the NAV object designer.  So, if you haven’t had the luxury of spending much time in the NAV development environment, this is where programmers spend the majority of their time.

It turns out that menus for the role-tailored client are modeled in the exact same way as the classic menus.  The only difference is that instead of having an object number of 52, they start in the thousands, i.e. 1055.  During the transformation cycle we had a non-developer update these.  That should give you an indication of how we started to feel—piece of cake !

Next up, we needed to understand the most important framework of the role-tailored client – roles and activities.  These are the basis for the whole “Role-Tailored Experience,” so it was critical that we shipped product with roles that were relevant for the NonProfit/NGO/Public Sector market.  As with menus, Microsoft’s implementation of roles and activities fit within the NAV architecture by utilizing the new page object.  Both the role and activities each require one page.  Below are the roles and activities we shipped with Navigator 6.0.

Finally, now that we understood menus to be an extension of the classic model along with roles and activities that are really just pages, the only new thing we needed to learn were pages.  Below is a partial shot of the Fund Card page object.  If you have ever looked at XML code from a web page you will see some similarities in the layout.  In fact, the page object gets compiled into managed C# code on the service tier.

Below is how the role-tailored client renders and presents the page to the user.

All in all, it took a couple of weeks for it to become clear on what we needed to do.  It then became an exercise based on the volume of work rather than the technical unknown (although there were the typical technical hurdles associated with any early adopter program).

Hopefully, this provides a little more clarity to what’s under the hood related to the role-tailored client.  It really comes down to a new object type called a page.  As is usually the case, Microsoft has done all of the heavy lifting and we now get to build and deliver some pretty cool stuff.  But, that’s for next time…

Ever wonder what’s better for your Nonprofit as far as accounting software solutions?

Last week we had almost 30 financial leaders from nonprofit organizations drive to Microsoft’s Los Angeles and Irvine offices to check it out.  The attendees (who dodged the rain!) were able to learn more about Dynamics accounting products, including Serenic Navigator, Great Plains and Dynamics SL (formerly known as Solomon).  Some might think these are tedious seminars, but we tried to make them exciting!

Matt Thayer, one of our marketing gurus, coordinated the events and was thrilled to see so many attendees interested in how they can do a better job of managing their nonprofits’ finances. One lucky person at each event received a free Microsoft Zune—load your tunes and you’re ready to dive into accounting software .

More than 60 nonprofit executives were registered for this week’s event at the Microsoft offices in New York City. We were once again thrilled at the number of attendees.  Unfortunately, mother nature prevailed and we had to cancel the event due to a huge snow storm.  But, we will definitely reschedule!

Anyway, we’re looking forward to similar events in various cities through the coming months.  We can’t imagine what attendance will be without all the rain and snow!

Stay tuned!

We’re excited to be featured on last week’s video blog: “Tech Tips with Matt Rothman.”  The video blog is a fun way to see what IT experts are saying about our nonprofit financial and operational software!

The video guest, Rob Kaplan of Watkins IT, talks with Matt about how nonprofits have different accounting challenges and why Serenic is a must-have when addressing nonprofit financial needs.  Other topics of discussion include grant management, how Serenic has built upon Microsoft Dynamics NAV, and of course—the NFL Playoffs.  Thanks, Rob and Matt, for giving Serenic a great shout-out—and we’re sorry that the J-E-T-S lost

Check it out!

Tech-Tips with Matt Rothman on Serenic

by Brandon Taylor

I was asked a question the other day, “What makes Navigator 2009 so much different then 5.0?”

What a perfect question to spawn this blog topic about Navigator 2009 from a development perspective! Over the next couple months I am going to attempt to break down this question and provide some development insight for each of the core areas related to Navigator 2009:

1. Role-tailored experience
2. Native web services
3. New 3-tier architecture

Today, let’s look at the Integrated Development Environment (IDE) where programmers spend their time creating the role-tailored experience.

The role-tailored client, RTC as we like to refer to it, is a windows client that was developed with the goal of improving the poor user experience (UX) associated with ERP systems.  There are lots of articles and whitepapers that outline the benefits of this RoleTailored design, but I think the implementation of the IDE in 2009 deserves some discussion to help existing clients understand what type of changes Microsoft has made that impacts developers as they plan to upgrade.

As with all things Microsoft Dynamics NAV, the development mantra is “simplicity”.  If it isn’t simple, then it typically does not make it in product.  This has held true with the IDE in 2009.  At the most basic conceptual level there are only three new objects a programmer has to learn (only one of them is truly new):

• roles and activities
• menusuites for the RTC
• pages

You might ask why Microsoft didn’t release an IDE built as part of Visual Studio or replace C/AL with C# as many people predicted while 2009 was under development (believe me they researched it).  There are now over 76,000+ customers and 3,600 partners (last count) worldwide using various add-ons and verticals based on the NAV development platform.  I suspect in keeping the IDE the same and only introducing three new concepts, customers along with partners can focus on what’s important – their mission.

As an embedded Microsoft ISV (independent software vendor), we at Serenic appreciate the “simplicity” mantra and that Microsoft takes care of the underlying framework components where most of the complexity resides.  It increases our ability to empower your mission by delivering operational functionality allowing you to operate more efficiently.

Next up, I am going to do a little deeper dive on roles and activities, menusuites, and pages so we can technically understand how these work.  Stay tuned!

Brandon Taylor is Serenic’s VP of Product Development and Strategy.

by David Abel

Hello to everyone in the Serenic Software community!  My name is David Abel and I am the VP of Client Services for Serenic.  I would like to start out by saying Happy 2010 and I wish everyone a very prosperous and safe year to come.  I am also very new to the blogging phenomenon, so as Chris Stevenson asked below, please bear with me.

I am very excited to announce the unveiling of SerenicSource – The Serenic Software Forum.  As previously announced during Explorations 2009(our user conference), Serenic committed to making available to all partners and clients a gathering area to mix and mingle between each other.  This forum will allow you to network, ask questions, make enhancement requests, and share ideas and tips.  For those of you who are familiar with MIBUSO, an on-line community for Microsoft Dynamics – NAV, this is similar, but dedicated to Serenic Software products.  All of the content will be user-generated.  I strongly encourage everyone to check it out and register.  The forum is open to anyone to read, but does require an authenticated registration in order to post.  Use this link to get started:  http://forums.serenic.com/phpbb2/index.php.

The idea behind internet forums is to make connections, participate in interest groups, share knowledge or simply find an answer to a question.   Serenic has developed the starting structure, but please feel free to ask for new forums that will help you get the most out of this resource.  Also, please remember that this is not an official support site and Serenic does not guarantee that content is accurate.  As such, always test thoroughly before doing anything in production.  We will be monitoring the forums, but official support will remain with support@serenic.com.

Hope you all find SerenicSource of great use–what better way to find out than to join? See you there!