Hi all. I have a question regarding a problem where I ran into when I was trying to do an upgrade to Navision Attain: Referring to doc: enusupgr.pdf. On Page 44 (4.1 Customizing the new database, Identifying Customized objects) there is mentioned the steps to take to customize the new database. Steps 1 and 2 are clear. But steps 3 and 4 not. How can you restore ojbects from the backup of the old customized Navision Financials dtabase into the new version of Navision Attain and then in step 4 to restore the backup of the old STANDARD Navision Financials database. You definately get errors because the data and the objects are not matching! That is the error I got. Or do I misunderstand something? Please help.
Hi Roelof - I think that they mean, you need to do the modification from 2.60 in attain (Tables). After that, you can restore the backup. This is the way you upgrade from 3x (dos based) to Financials. PS Tell Robert Hello from Me - It’s been a while 
//Henrik Helgesen -: KISS::Keep it Simple, Stupid :-
Hi Henrik, Thanks for your reply. Yes that was the only answer I could think off. But it was written in a weird way in the documentation. Do you have any experience with upgrading from 2XX to Attain?
No - Not Yet //Henrik Helgesen -: KISS::Keep it Simple, Stupid :-
Do you use ICQ?
I can’t understand too. I think they meen, that we should convert old and standart NF databases to attain by restoring backup. Then export all design to txt files and compare using merge tools. Maybe merge tools can’t understand old NF obj txt files. I’m starting upgrade too. I have havy customized NF 1.30 and should upgrade to attain Welcome to hell
Upgrade?? In the UK we do not yet have an upgrade module. From 1.XX it might be better treating it as a new installation. with Dimensions & Value entries etc: It could be a nightmare. David Cox email: david@mindsource.co.uk
Well its a pain in the butt, thats for sure. Yes, there are upgrade-tools, which you can download from the web. I think Dalius, you are right. That is what I did too and it seems to work. The only thing what I don’t understand is: how do I need to import the merged customized 301 text objectfile into a new 301 Database? It gives errors because of creating objects in < 50000 range. Or is the moral of this story, that it is better to do the upgrade in the old fashioned way, that is: manually upgrading the 301 objects with the customazations like with the previous versions? Roelof.
David I know that start new installation is N time easier. I can’t say to my customer: - Hey, all work done in these 3 years is #$@#^%# scrap !!! Let’s start it from begining. You can believe or not, but they REALLY using all data for analysis !!! Financial software is worth nothing, data is riches. So I have two variants: 1. use nf 1.30 and develop new facilities. Maybe downgrade 3.01 code to 1.30 2. upgrade to 3.01 Roelof, if you talking about removed tables (project code …), you should use upgrade Codeunits, they works following: 1. in old customized db import fob. It creates temp tables in 50k … 100k range. 2. run codeunit, it transfers data to these temp tables. 3. Remove old tables (project code …) 4. make backup … x1. in customization of 3.01 you should remove links to deleted tables … W1. import customized obj table to new db W2. restore data from backup W3. complete upgrade by runing codeunits from upg.fob Teoricaly it should work, but I don’t tried yet. If you test it let me know, OK ?
Thanks for your reply, Dalius. I’ll check it out.
Dalius: I agree with your assessment on the upgrade procedure for upgrading the old NF data to NA3.01. As I read it, that would be what the upgrade toolkit is supposed to do. Roelof: As far as your problem is concerned, I think the hoops that we are jumping through is because the entire database is new… “Unlike previous upgrades, with Attain, every single object was changed, if only to add captions.” to quote from the US Special Upgrade Instructions document. We have to make sure we get every object to conform to the new standards or else you’ll get that annoying display in the Merge tool every time to get to a caption change, which could have you sitting there for bloody HOURS! (Not something I’m relishing!!!) But you are quite right; it isn’t making sense. I hope to see more when I start my first 3.01 upgrade this afternoon. Regards until then! Kristopher Webb Kelar Corporation, Canada
Kristopher, Keep me updated on your experience regarding your upgrade. I would appreciate that. Roelof.
Hi I have done numerous upgrades from 2.60 to 3.01B. It is not so difficult as you might think. The most importing thing is to start with a 2.60 backup and import it in a EMTY 3.01B database and from here run the upgradetools. Remember Navision Developers Toolkit 1.00b !!! It makes upgrades MUCH easyer. Palle Arentoft, Product Manager Aston Naviteam A/S Denmark Email : par@astongroup.com
Hey gang! I’ve finally hurdled all the stumbling blocks on my upgrade, and I thought I’d write a note to address a few of the thoughts that have been filtering through this discussion. I’m not sure if you have all discovered much the same in the time that it has taken me to get to this point, but perhaps someone will find something of interest. grin ++++++ Roelof de Jong Posted - 2001 Nov 27: “On Page 44 (4.1 Customizing the new database, Identifying Customized objects) there is mentioned the steps to take to customize the new database. Steps 1 and 2 are clear. But steps 3 and 4 not.” The Navision-US partner site has an Upgrade FAQ that addresses this misunderstanding. Bacically, you create a new database in Attain in step 3, then perform a restore from the customer’s .fbk file into the new database, but without any data. To do this, I unselected all the companies (no checkmarks), and unselected the option “Data common to all companies”. Step 4 is very much the same, except you create a completely new Attain database, then perform the restore of the previous base .fbk. Use the same options for no data restore as you used in step 3! ++++++ Dalius Brokevicius Posted - 2001 Nov 29: “I can’t understand too. I think they meen, that we should convert old and standart NF databases to attain by restoring backup. Then export all design to txt files and compare using merge tools. Maybe merge tools can’t understand old NF obj txt files.” Exactly correct! The reason to do these restores into the Attain databases is because the Attain Object Text Export has a different format, and when doing your object compare, you’ll need to have all versions in the new format. +++++++ Roelof de Jong Posted - 2001 Nov 30: " think Dalius, you are right. That is what I did too and it seems to work. The only thing what I don’t understand is: how do I need to import the merged customized 301 text objectfile into a new 301 Database? It gives errors because of creating objects in < 50000 range." The thing I found most helpful was to only export and compare objects that had been modified in the customer database. For example, if the Customer table (18) was modified for the customer, I exported it from the Previous Base, Customer Modified, and Attain Base databases for my compare. This will 1) reduce the amount of objects you have to export and compare (because the Merge Tool in the Developer Toolkit will give you a bunch of hits for stupid stuff for unmodified objects that you should just ignore), and 2) you can text import over top of a base Attain group of objects later in your upgrade and not have to worry about the permission errors for base objects (because you’ll only be modifying the existing objects/fields, not “creating” new objects/fields). ++++++ Dalius Brokevicius Posted - 2001 Nov 30: “Roelof, if you talking about removed tables (project code …), you should use upgrade Codeunits, they works following:” Very important. Do this. But of course, you’ll have to re-write these Codeunits to conform to the customizations in your database. For example, in Canada we have slightly different tax setups and I had to modify the codeunits to clear/transfer data from tables that wasn’t covered in the worldwide Upgrade Toolkit. (Just an aside note to any Canadians reading this contemplating upgrading: I wouldn’t recommend upgrading any 2.60 installations yet, until the North American 3.10 Attain version and new 3.10 Canadian Upgrade Toolkit come out because of the taxes, of course.) ++++++ And finally, the last note that Palle Arentoft has made is absolutely correct. Use the Upgrade Tools and the Developer Toolkit. Hopefully all the NTRs will be doing what Navision-US has done (Navision-US has produced the FAQ and an additional Word document that was included in the .zip for the Upgrade Toolkit that distilled the Upgrade manual down to a nice, easily read format) insert applause. Also, I found it helpful in one or two instances to have a text comparitor tool. We use a program called ExamDiff Pro here, and we’ve been most pleased with it’s performance, even on very large .txt exports! Well, enough rambling from my corner of the world for now. Good luck everyone on their upgrades! Regards! Kristopher Webb Kelar Corporation, Canada Edited by - Kristopher on 2002 Jan 17 16:55:08
Yes, Kristopher, MergeTools & NDK is very helpfull, but they are useful only for comparing. NDK 1.00 have bug in export of txt file. (Maybe it couses localization ?) Merge in MergeTool is too discomfortable, easier and faster is to use compare and modify obj using copy/paste from old NF to NA. For compare I prefer NDK. Check this in upgrade Toolkit manual: page 2, 2 line from top: …designed to help you upgrade from Navision Financials 2.01.x and later to Navision Attain 3.01. page 47, 5 line from bottom: … You must only carry out this step in the upgrade procedure if you are upgrading from Navision Financials 2.00 or earlier. So, this toolkit designed for NF 1.30 or not ? Can I skip upgrade NF 1.30 → NF 2.01 ?
I mostly use CodeWright to compare different versions. Its a good product. An other problem what I discovered was that, when I tried to upgrade an 2.60 Mfg version into Attain, I got an error related to the serial# and lot#. For some reason the conversion fob tools do not initializing these fields. Im getting the error when I try to import the modified objects (301 customized) into the database (after ranning codeunits 104045 and 104047, see page 60). Do I miss conversion step(s)? Roelof.
quote:
Originally posted by db: So, this toolkit designed for NF 1.30 or not ? Can I skip upgrade NF 1.30 → NF 2.01 ?
No NDT is NOT designed for NF 1.30, you can compare ANY version you want with NDT !!! And No you cannot just skip the upgrade for 1.30 to 2.01 if you want to go to 3.01/3.10. Because of the changes of the design of the tables, and ofcourse of the the new way of doing entries from the new General Posting Setup-table. You better take one step at the time 1.30->2.01->2.50->2.60->3.01 Palle Arentoft, Product Manager Edited by - pallea on 2002 Jan 19 16:16:25