I have a client who is running offices in three operational centres within the country. The Client is right now using NAV 4.0. The client runs Nav only at theheadquaters, but would now like to roll it out to the operations centres. We had two options for this client: a WAN or Consolidation, both of which he has rejected.
This client would like a solution where the employees at the operational centres can connect through the internet, using any connection even just a dial up. I am thinking this solution is the user portal. Could some one help me with the following:
Confirm if this will work
Specify what is require to have the user portal installed and running
From my point of view User Portal has a bad implementation of a Web based Navision. You can’t use correctly Navision under User Portal. If you want remote access from Navision you must use Citrix or TS. Both solution allow to tunnel Navision over http.
Employee portal kinda works, User portal doesn’t; good luck finding a reference site for either.
Both of them are limited in what they can do and require every form to be specially re-written for ‘web access’. (hmm, I’m sure I’ve heard that about something else, recently)
You almost certainly want a remote desktop or Citrix solution, Citrix ‘seamless windows’ especially sits very well with the customer as it “looks exactly the same as a local connection but uses a three tier architecture optimised for internet use”. In this respect it’s even better than NAV 2009, but NAV 2009 has the technical advantage that it can run Automation objects at the client where as a Citrix/RDP client cannot (so no direct export to excel or outlook integration for Citrix).
As for actually using NAV 2009, the developers are swearing AT it.