How difficult is Microsoft navision development?

Hello

I just started working in navision, i have three months to learn Microsoft Navision development, i must learn c/al too. Is three month enought to learn vavision development?

IMHO… As far as the development environment and language is concerned, yes. Learning to write simple reports, create tables and forms/pages, probably, yes. But due to the complexity of some operations in NAV, in 3 months, you won’t even know that you don’t know all the places to look or even how to find some of them, in order to make sure a modification is not breaking the system. I hope you have someone experienced to help you. For a while, ask him to reveiw your modification designs with you before you begin them.

3 Months? To Learn it…Depends on the person. To do it WELL…NO

Scroll down to the downloads
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=eec997be-50c8-4d27-8bf2-fa93c9ac282a&DisplayLang=en

& start cracking those books!
http://www.packtpub.com/books?keys=dynamics+nav&x=13&y=15

3 Months? To Learn it…Depends on the person. To do it WELL…I would have to say NO!

Scroll down to the downloads:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=eec997be-50c8-4d27-8bf2-fa93c9ac282a&DisplayLang=en

Start Cracking these books:
http://www.packtpub.com/books?keys=dynamics+nav&x=13&y=15

Has anyone been thru the Developer classes since MS took over the show and would they recommend them?

I was going to say that towards the end of the 3 months that snsn should go thru the dev courses. (At the end so as to be as familiarized with the material as possible.)

When I went thru them they were still being run by Navision NA up in Atlanta, so I don’t know anything about the classes MS has now.

“Easy” is relative.

Now am reading book “Programming Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009” by Devid Studebaker. The program is already created for this company and works, the sql database size is 40 gb. my responsibility is to add new reports,to control permissions, if will be any problem i mast eradicate this problem and e.t. I will have training, but until training will be i want to learn some basic in navision development. What is the best book for me? how can i train and learn navision development?

If the version of NAV you are working on is NAV 2009 then the book you have now and “Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009 Application Design” (see Savatage’s link) are probably the most applicable. If it’s a previous version then I would get Studebaker’s previous release, “Programming Microsoft® Dynamics NAV” as it will be applicable to versions 5 and below.

Get a copy of the classic demo DBF and put it on your computer so you can play around with it as much as you like with no fear of causing a problem. Zip it up before you first open it so that if you ever need to go back to the beginning, it’s right there for you. You will need to get a copy of your company’s license to put in your executable’s folder as well. And it sounds like you are working for a company who uses NAV rather than an MS partner, so you will not have access to a developer license which means there will probably be alot in the books you can’t get access to (code behind forms, and tables, codeunits, etc…). I say probably because you company COULD have the Application Builder and Solution Developer granules which would give you more access, but not complete developer access.

  • are you putting pressure on yourself, or is someone else?

As DigiTecKid says, programming/development is one issue. To understand NAV - how it is intended to work and why - that’s another issue. And this is the base to know what , where and how to (and not to) change or add objects.

I also want to know if its possible to learn nav programming in 3 months… hehe I mean to be a bit advanced in nav programming in 3 months…

I am also a newbie in nav (or ERP )… I am currently learning nav5.0 and I’m on my first month in learning nav…

Right now I know how to make reports(simple ones) like invoices,lists, tables, forms, xmlports, dataports, codeunits,use data migration, printing reports on pdf’s and using report selections… BUT i think its just 20% of what I should know about nav…

I haven’t tried installing nav on my own. I also don’t have anybody to ask to, like seniors etc… I only depend on myself and mibuso, dynamicuser/google/pdf’s… Sometimes I feel hopeless every time I encounter problems that I know is very simple yet I don’t know how to fix it…

My advice(personal advice) is that you just have to read the manuals and try to explore nav… Learn how to access nav like an end user , know the data structure of nav. I don’t know if that’s a good advice… hehe But hope it helps…

Go go snsn! You can do it… Just think positive:) If you are really dedicated to know nav, you’ll make it after 3months:) That doesn’t mean that after 3months you’ll stop learning nav, 3months will make u good at it… And after your 3months training learn advanced things…:slight_smile:

Well, 3 months can help you only to reach basic knowlge about Microsoft navision development but if you really want to become an expert, you must spend more time for it. “Programming Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009” is a good book for beginner, you can find many useful info from it.

There has been a lot of discussions about this subject before. But anyone who thinks that they can learn to become a good Navision developer in three months, they are in for a surprise.

Almost anyone who has a programming background can learn how to write reports or code in Dynamics NAV in a short time. And if they have 2-3 months, then they can learn a lot. The actual code and programming is not the difficult part of learning how to become a Navision Developer.

The part that takes the most time is to get familiar with Dynamics NAV. Learning how the system actually works, and how the users are thinking. Now you might say that “this is not the task of the developer, that’s the task of the consultant!”. Well you couldn’t be more wrong. As a developer you should know the system as well as the consultant from a users perspective, and at the same time you must know how to change it. Otherwise you will end up writing code which in the best case is just duplicate code to what is already in the system, but in worst case is simply designed so that it is not working the way the customer actually wanted it to work. As the developer, then you must be able to challenge the consultant (and the customer), to why a change is required.

And always remember that a good developer is a lazy developer. Not in the way that he/she wants other people to do their work (by posting their projects here on the user group!!), but someone who really just want to do as little changes as possible, or simply copy sections of code from other part of the system.

The book “Programming Dynamics NAV 2009” is fine, but I can really recommend that you read Mark Brummels book"Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009 Application Design" - this one really gives you a very fine introduction to the various modules in Navision from a developers perspective.

Erik could not be more right. I’ll be honest, I was a crappy developer for at least the first year I worked with NAV (about 5 now), and it was because I didn’t know how NAV actually worked. I didn’t know what a journal or a ledger was. It was bad. C/AL was easy, but I was still writing really buggy code. I wanted to stay with NAV because I liked it so I spent the next year to two years reading and learning the Application manuals. As a result, I am now what Erik calls a “lazy” developer, meaning I use what already exists and do not reinvent the wheel. There are around 2 million lines of code in NAV, so you will never know them all, but knowing what can be done will help you more than almost any technical knowledge you will pick up beyond C/AL.