I’m currently an employee of a startup micro company which does NAV Development and Implementation. Currently, the company has only 2 employees. Apart from my Boss who is an expert of NAV and the only developer of the company, who gets most things done, I’m the only person doing all possible best to keep up with the Programming of NAV. The only training available is reading NAV books.
Unfortunately, My Boss doesn’t show a nice face whenever I ask him any question about NAV programming or concepts that are not in any book (e.g Creating a Number Series for a New Table)
Because of this, I always have to depend on this forum for help since my other collegue has little experience of NAV programming. Honestly, sometimes this takes much of my time.
Currently, I have been give an HR project to develop and I’m having lots of challenges. What do I do? I’m new to NAV.
I would say - change company. You will not be able to learn fast yourself - so you just will waste a lot of time. This is bad for clients and your company. But most important it is bad for you - time is not renewable and most valuable resource. Use i wise.
Thank you so much… This what I have been thinking of always. I have been with this company for 11 months and I don’t get anyone to talk to whenever I get stuck. Could you imagine I had to depend on this fourm just to be taught how to programme for a number series for a new table. I always Ihave to read already written codes. The problem I have most in programming NAV is, even though I understand most of the concepts and C/AL functions, there are times when I would like to ask someone the status quo of some codes but I there is no one and I can’t always ask my Boss, since he will see me to be “stupid”. Hence, there are somethings accept at surface value. And I just not happy.
It’s one thing not to where to start when you have “an HR system to develop”, since there is probably a hefty amount of analysis and design in there that you are way not ready for. Stuff like that comes with years and years of experience and expert guidance. The guidance seems to be severely missing in your situation…
It’s another entirely that you still don’t know how to figure out numbering series. This is absolutely something that a junior level developer with 11 months of experience should be capable of figuring out without any help.
You need to get properly trained. Not just a manual and good luck reading, but a real training. If your boss is not willing to give that to you, then FIND ANOTHER JOB. Look for other NAV partners, call them up and ask about career path, support from coworkers, whether you will have a senior to help you. Personal development is one of the most important things in this field, and your employer should provide you with plenty of opportunities to learn.
Hello Alex, thanks for your contribution to my post.
With no hard feelings, your question is one of of the questions I wouldn’t like anyone to ask me in future and that’s why I made this post… just to see the way forward in changing my situation.
I’m Junior programmer of VB.net and C# when I was in school. I believe it was because I had lots of mates to ask questions whenever I get stuck. But this doesn’t mean I will be a good NAV programmer. There was I post here on this fourm (I will search for it and give you the link) which said the best way to understand NAV is to practise so as to understand the application. Unfortunately, this training is absent at my current place of work, just because I thought I could make it all by myself.
With all due respect, I would like you to tell me under what conditions will someone become a NAV programmer in my situation??? And if you can match any of those conditions in my situation.
Thank for your advice… I really like your contribution, it’s obvious you have really understood what I’m talking about.
Don’t be shock about my performance after these 11 months, what I have always be doing is fixing menial issues from client. Sometimes, I don’t get the logics and this takes me hours to find my way through. The real things are done by the boss and he tells no one “why this is that or why this is where!” I really understand the Language with the readings I have done. But what are in the books are just a fraction of what is in the real NAV prograaming world.
Honestly, I really acknowledge and appreciate your contributions and suggestion.
Nobody is saying that YOU are doing a bad job. Given that you get no support from your work place you might be doing a fabulous job. The thing is though, that you should have gotten proper training, as well as someone that is assigned to help you learn the right things.
When I started my NAV job, they had me do a few months of the menial tasks, and then they sent me out to training for two weeks for the developer certification. All along I had the help of a senior developer, who taught me invaluable lessons about how to approach this job, not just C/AL tricks and tips. In about 4 months I was pretty much independent, and hardly needed any help at all.
The most important thing that I learned was to use the tools properly. I learned how to figure things out. Nobody showed me how numbering series works, but I was able to figure it out because I knew how to use the object designer and the debugger to figure these things out.
Wasting 11 months at your current work place where your primary task is NAV and you do not take the inititive to actively learn NAV or try to figure things out on your own.
From my experience, a language is a language. Logic is what’s important here, if you’re good in VB and C#, then the chances are you’re going to be good in NAV. My primary language is Chinese / Mandarin, if I can’t construct a proper sentence in Chinese, what makes you think I can construct a proper sentence in another language like Spanish?
Let’s be honest, no company in their right mind, especially in a micro company where budget is tight, would hire someone without an effort to get them up to speed. I’m guessing your bosses may have lost patience with you… [:(]
I don’t blame the owners or the existing employees, I don’t feel you’re taking the job seriously.
Anywho, I don’t know your current situation, but if I was in your shoes, I’d leave the company and find out what I really want to do.
Money comes and goes, time and youth is something you will never get back. Use it wisely.
My introduction to Navision was “you speak a bit of German don’t you? Here is the German version of Navision, can you translate the key reports and screens into Czech and implement it with a go live date in 2 months from now?”.
Actually it wasn’t that bad because a week later they found out there was a pseudo English version, nso we abandoned the german version and went with the English version which made it a lot easier.
We went live 3 hours late, so it wasn’t too bad an implementation.
Enock, I’m with DenSter. Without proper training, your headache is just creating headaches for your customers. They put me on reports as my first thing and I had one of two developers that I would discuss how I was going to do the report, then they would review the report and advise me on proper NAV coding and logic. And looking back I believe it cost the company a lot less to handle me that way. The customer was never unhappy because I gave them garbage, I learned the right way to do things MUCH faster, their developers did not have to interrupt their projects with the unexpected - “The customer is very upset because this modification is wrong. You have to stop what you are doing now and fix this!”, etc…
As a freelance developer I get ALOT of “fix-me” projects and I can tell they are from developers who didn’t have a good understanding of how to develop in NAV.
You say your boss is an expert in NAV. How long has he been working with NAV?
