Back in the good ole days, the process of becoming a Navision developer started with you learning Navision, say as a user, then maybe you moved up to the Reprot designer as say the Navision Sysadmin for your company, somewhere in there, you probably did some user training, wrote a few specs up, and then after 1-2 years you got certified in Navision, and started developing. I was Navision certified so long ago, that I have no idea what you need to do nowadays, but I do know that it all about tests and bits of paper, rather than knowledge of the Navision product and its implementation. But thats another thread for another day. For those that want to get started as a Navision developer, I would like to put together a step by step of what to do. I don’t mean “how to become a good Navision developer”, for now I just mean how to “get a label you can stick on your forehead that says you are a good Navision developer”. So if people that either have first hand knowledge, or have just gone through it would like to help, please post a list of steps, once they are all together, I will complie them into one topic for the beginers thread, and sticky it in place. Thanks all. PS, please don’t copy paste from MS, I want this topic to reflect what rally goes on, to make life easier for Newbies, and I might even get certified again myself for fun. PPS I don’t want to know about specific test questions etc. I just want the Test IDs, the steps, the minimum requirements etc. If you want to give some hints such as “Learn how bbins work, there are questions about it” that would be good.
Oh by the way, if you are viewing as a guest, please sign up, and add your comments, if you are just starting in Navision, then its your comments we want here.
bump.
I recently had to recertify. The part I am not sure about is if you can just get certified in Navisiond evelopment without working for a solution center. The development capabilities are managed through the licensing, and that can get VERY expensive (I believe the full deal is 28 thousand dollars), so just the certification does not guarantee you that you will be able to actually do the work in Navision. There are two exams that you have to take: - Attain Programming (yes they still call it Attain Programming, it says so on my certificate) - Navision Development I don’t have Partnersource open, so I don’t know the numbers of these exams. Usually the numbers will be available from the exam website. You will have to take the exam at a Microsoft certified exam center. Back in Holland that was Sylvan Prometric, and here I went to a place called ‘New Horizons’, probable affilliated with a national organization. Those guys have centers all over the US, and you should be able to find them through either partnersource or your solution center. Then, the license… We used to all have personal developer licenses, but for some reason Microsoft is not refreshing those anymore and we now have one company license. I don’t know if that is because of the status at Microsoft of the company that I work for, but it seems that personal licenses are no longer supported.
Here in Holland we have company licenses to. No more personal licenses.
I am a new beginner. and i have no idea about navision. i have some cds but dont know how to use them. still i am trying . will u pl. let me know on which topic i should be thourough. like sqlserver 2000 , xml, c/al programming pl. help me regards bandana
bandana, I will be collecting a number of posts from MBS Online, and compling them together over the weekend.
another way is to find a solution center and work your way up from there. Back in the good ol’ days, training was FREE!! Now Microsoft charge for these courses. [V]
Basically yes the NSC path is the optimal way to go. I am not planning anything differnt. I just want to give advise to people on how to become good at it, no matter which path you choose.
As and end user, I think you probably have to take a different track. first get your company to license the basics form designer, dataports and reports and tables. From this you can study the basic cal programing guide that comes with your CD. this will give you a feel for programing, but is very limited because you can not access cal code on forms, which to do any real developement is a must, you also can not access code units. Once you have done that and see a future you have to convince your company to license the application designer granual, which at last check was around $8000. This will give you access to cal code in forms and codeunits, as well as most tables. You still can not access certain protected tables, such as posted entries, but you can disign most everything in Navision, except very advance items. Once you have done this, you then could be hired at a solution center and take the rest of the path to be Navision Certified, there you would have access to the developer license. Which last time I check was around $26000. and really out of reach of most people, and even most companies that are end user Navision users.
David, good comments. Actually in the early days of Navision, you were not able to go to Navision training until you had 1 year of experience with at least report designer! The rule of course was not strongly enforced, but it was there.
Thank u sir.
I’m a developer (.Net, VB, mainframe, etc…) and just started working for a small company that uses Navision and I’m clueless! I think they’re going to use a VAR (maybe) for any major programming changes, but I need to know some basics and I’m not finding training as a Navision Developer too accessible (meaning, it’s not offered in too many places). Any suggestions? Thanks - nic
You could start looking at my book, but I haven’t gotten to development yet. Once the book is finished I may be offering some high end training classes. Over the weekend though I will be colating all the “How to learn development threads”.
Can some one outline the steps required to become certified. (By that I mena which tests need to be passed and what that test covers).
Well, it’s quite a jungle nowadays [8D] If you by certified mean “Certified Master–Navision Developer”, then:
quote:
Required Exams: • Navision C/SIDE Introduction (Formally known as Navision Programming) • Navision C/SIDE Solution Development (Formally known as Navision Development) Elective Exams*: • Navision Financials Exam • Navision Warehouse Management Exam • Navision Manufacturing Exam • Navision Trade & Inventory Exam • Navision Installation & Configuration Exam
*Must pass 2 out of the 5 elective exams You can also become “Certified Master–Navision Installation & Configuration” and “Certified Master–Navision Application”. It’s all outlined on Partnersource.
Thanks Steffan, of course many (if not most) of the people that want to know all this don’t have access to Partner Source, which is why I wanted to create a simple outline here in the Beginers Forum. Could some one also explain what the differnt certifications mean, i.e. what can you do with which certification.
SInce I have just started the posts about how to actaully develop in Dynamics NAV. I would really appreciate help form some one that has recently become certified if they could post a step by step of what you need to get certified. Thanks
Hi This has all changed a lot in previous years and seems to still be quite fluid. My understanding starts at the company level and then filters down, this will therefore not directly answer David’s question regarding how to become certified as a Navision developer, but lets start the story at the beginning. We now have the Microsoft Partner Program Competency in Microsoft Business Solutions. To gain this competency you need the following: Certification Requirement Employ or contract with at least two individuals who combined must complete and pass a total of five unique Microsoft exams from the following list. Note: Microsoft Navision exams do not classify an individual as a Microsoft Certified Professional (MCP). Microsoft Navision exams are a part of the Microsoft Business Solutions Certified Professional Program. Required exams: SQL Server - Microsoft Exam 70-228 : Installing, Configuring, and Administering Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Enterprise Edition Navision C/SIDE Solution Development Navision Financials Plus two of your choice from the following exams: Navision Manufacturing Navision Warehouse Management Navision Relationship Management Navision Service Management Navision C/SIDE Solution Introduction Navision Installation & Configuration Navision Trade & Inventory Navision Costing Retail Management Store Operations Retail Management Headquarters Customer Reference Requirement Submit at least three customer references each featuring the implementation, deployment, customization, or maintenance of Microsoft Navision. Of course to have competency awarded you need to be selling and implementing - how? My understanding is you as a company have to approach Microsoft and they may allow you to sell it, but not claim competency [:D] What this means is with regards to individuals you need two people to pass 5 exams, which brings me back to David’s original question - how do you become a certified developer. My belief is all you need to be a “certified developer” is the Navision C/SIDE Solution Development exam, although you may also want the Navision Financials exam to understand the application, but again I do not believe it is necessary. This may also be different in different parts of the world. I believe it is something Microsoft are attempting to resolve, and hence why changes are ongoing, but this is from the perspective of my knowledge in the UK. What has happened is the focus is on the reseller becoming “competent” and they do this by training individuals (or employing them). Other changes include the exams themselves, you can now book them on www.vue.com, meaning they are available to all - previously only NSC (VAR) employees could sit them centrally at the NTR. Ironically of the 12 exams listed, I can only sit three through VUE, GB 01-010 Attain Financial Management 3.60 (3.60 [:D]) GB 05-010 Attain Programming 3.60 GB 02-010 Navision Manufacturing 3.70 These are pulled as at the time of this posting. Do not worry about the renaming, my understanding is the programming exam is the solution development exam, at least this is how it works in the UK, I believe the US maybe different. The “Master” referred to by Steffen I believe to be the one individual recognition with Kudos, illustrating you know everything. I think Jesper passed this when he was with Microsoft, but they are considering dropping it, after all what does it get you? Back to the changes, being an NSC is technically free, if you can become one, a reseller fee used to be in place, the other side of this is that now you have to pay for training, previously it was free as part of the fee, but again this is Microsoft standardisation, the training is outsourced (Interquad in the UK) but of course you have to pay for it, but again it does mean you do not have to be associated with an NSC to attend the training. So the exams and courses are now open to everyone, the downside is you need to pay for them! Not really answering the question, but there is my tuppence worth.
I was starting this thread more for developers, not for NSC status, so I think you answered that, and more all in one go. I think you get more that tupence for that. Thanks