Inform to Microsoft about the functionality

Hi experts,

Can i know the How to inform to Microsoft about the Required Functionality which is asked by most clients.

Please throw the link .

How to know that requirement is already informed to Microsoft by somebody.

Please share about that one.

Link : https://connect.microsoft.com/dynamicssuggestions

Search with any word like , tolerance , then it will open all the lists regarding the Tolerance

I did one post for tolerance and got the usual reply. “Will be considered in next version”. I wanna see when, that new version fulfilling all those standard commitment MS does to every poster, will come. [:D]

I had one excepted for 2009, but I submitted 5 and could not find which one had been accepted. It is not a perfect system and the product managers assessing the requirements sometimes give very strange justifications, I have some opinions on this but will not express them here [:D]

Yes, of course, we can’t expect MS will include any & all “issues” and willings posted to MS Connect in the upcoming HotFix (who still remembers these?) or next version / SP, but, as someone from MS told, they are following to what is posted there, recently the site was even slightly redesigned - so there is a sense of posting in MSC…

The problem is that everyone thinks that their specific requirement is needed by everyone else, and generally that is not true.

Look just at how many bad things have been added to Navision that never should have. We all now have to suffer performance problems because of so many silly requirements that are used by such a small minority of the Navision base.

Personally I would rather Microsoft had a list of “things that should be removed form Navision”. Then instead, work at making existing functionality better, more stable, more reliable and faster.

David Do you have a list of things that should be removed?

Really strange , If david says there should be a reason .

Can i know the that list.

it is really helpful to others.

No I never really created a list. You, I and most of the rest of us know though that it’s extremely unlikely that any “feature” will ever be removed from Navision even if it really should be, since someone somewhere will complain. So since its not really going to be possible to remove things, I guess I could say my list could break into three categories.

  1. The list of things that should not have been added to Navision
  2. The list of things that should not have been added to Navision until they were fully thought out tested and working
  3. The list of things that should should have been a lot lot simpler.

There are many examples, but for example, as it is Service Manager should not have been a part of the base product. Its a small percentage of clients that really use it and it detracts from other more important functionality.

Then we have Serial and Lot numbering, Reservations, Advanced Dimensions, Bins, Planning, all of which are necessary components of an ERP system, but were made way too complex causing three issues;

  1. They took years and many iterations before they really worked properly.
  2. They added unnecessary load to the system making ALL systems slower even if they don’t use the code
  3. For most customers, even though those are complex still do not fulfill the needs, thus they need to be modified, BUT because they are so complex they are nearly impossible to modify. So if a customer needs simple ABC planning for inventory. Planning would make a great Italian meal, since it looks so much like a plate of spaghetti modifying it is horrendous, so generally customers need to have a new planning engine built from scratch. Why couldn’t it have been done much simpler as a base planning engine, and all the just in time components released as an add-on for those that need it. small percentage of clients use serial numbers, yet we have so much added complexity to the costing engine just for this. Reservations are only usable in rare cases. Why not a simpler inventory allocation system that simply blocks available qty, not specific lines, and then have line level reservation as an add on.

Navision’s logo used to be “The Beauty Of Simplicity” and that’s what made it so great. Now we are losing this to the feature war, just so a salesperson can tick off boxes and make it easier to close the deal. Whilst at the same time increasing the total cost of the project for the customer.

Oh and on the other side, its quite annoying when there is a good piece of functionality that is not made standard. Eg. Kitting or Catera. OK catera is way to complex, as is. But a simplified version that allows phased payments and better AR control is really important in the ERP world. And Kitting really fits a gap between BOMs and Manufacturing that has long been missing.

To me there just does not seem to be a lot of logic why one piece of functionality makes it and another not.

I totally agree with David!
Here in our company we experienced a lack of quality in NAV from version 3 (Attain). Before that releases were tested quite good (or was it just made better from scratch?). It was way better if e.g. versions 3.01 till 3.70a never was released at all - what headaces and loss of hair those versions have given me…!

But what we learned from that, is never to sell a new version to a customer unless he insists and will use NAV in a very simple way. Otherways we wait. Patiently!

An error is an error, but when it affects a customer, who wants to know why his inventory suddenly does not balance - differences at some thousands of €. Perhaps not a lot of money to some, but to others it is the difference between a company’s life and dead.

And "…things that should not have been added to Navision until they were fully thought out tested and working " - absolutely! And obvoius!!

Just to continue in the mood of comments here - never use X-point-ZERO version as soon as it’s released, wait at least for SP1 [:D]

This is true for ALL software, not only Navision… And sometimes even SP1 can’t help - here an example could be Win Vista, a really working Vista is called Win7, positioned by MS as next major release of OS, but actually it is patched & redesigned Vista, as it should have been when released, but MS wanted to push it out to market, regardless to all problems they obviously should have been aware about…

Anfinnur - 3.70 was actually a “working” 3.60, there were SO many flaws in 3.60 (where many principal changes had been made) that no HF’s or SPs could handle them.

Biggest headache is with backward DATA compatibility - extending old or adding new features could be done much easier, if data structures are allowed to change, but you can’t, as old data simply doesn’t fit in, but MUST - ERP system is not a wordprocessor, it MUST maintain historical data entered in previous years & versions. So these clumsy solutions are born - to mention unlimited Dims grown from Dept & Project, all this Item tracking thingie built upon what was Reservation data structures, you name it…

When MS decides, that there is no more room for “stretching” and absolutely no chance to fit functionality in existing structures, it decides for change - but then we all are crying again - how to maintain existing data? That was the case with Jobs in v5, close all WIPs to convert - but how to accomplish that in working environment - you can’t say to client “stop the business and go on a vacation for a fortnight”…