Moving from Navison 2.6 to 5.0 or 5.1

How would you reccomend upgrading from 2.6? Would you move to 5.0 or 5.1 and why.

The upgrade process to a newer version of Navision is related to your current installation. It’s necessary to know current add-ons, number of users and features “granules” you have bought for that version.

If your’s current installation can’t satisfy your current requirements than I would recommend upgrading to a newer version. NAV 5.0 and 5.1 are supported to have the same feature in terms of business processes. Navision 2.6 isn’t supported by Microsoft anymore.

I don’t know if Microsoft will provide and upgrade toolkit directly from 2.6 to 5.0 / 5.1, or else you have to make upgrade in 2 steps.

There are additional major functionalties in 5.x that’s not available in 2.x. for example:

  1. CRM
  2. Warehouse Management
  3. Improved Costing analysis
  4. Landed Cost capbility
  5. Prepayments
  6. Kits
  7. Manufacturing

If none of these major functionalities satisfies your business requirement, then you probably don’t need to upgrade. However, if you plan to use Vista, then you’ll need to at least upgrade the executables to 5.x.

http://dynamicsuser.net/blogs/mark_brummel/archive/2007/04/02/why-upgrading-to-nav-5-0.aspx

Good luck

From my end user prespective, here is the track I would take. This is what we did, back in 2005, in looking at 4.0, we were on 2.0 with advanced distrubution (which is what most of the warehouse functions in newer realeases came from)

get a current copy of 5.0 to review (there is nothing you really can use to evaluate 5.1, so don’t waste your time, start fresh as if you are just now evaluating it for a new install, don’t look at what you currently have just yet in Navision 2

See what you like in 5.0 and can use out of the box. Then see what is missing so you can evaluate what you need to have either converted from your current installation or my recomendation, programmed new, in 5.0 You will very likely, find that many things you had changed in 2.0 really don’t need to be carried over to 5.0, and this will save you alot of money. And by not trying to carry mods over from earlier versions, they can be programmed better for 5.0, if they start from scratch, because then they can programmed with SQL in mind, which your 2.0 database didn’t really even want to use. ( yes, I know you can use it, but the native database is what Navision was programmed for back then)

Now, once your 5.0 needs requirements are complete, tell your solution center to give you an estimate to program it, and make sure they take into account all programming changes be made with an eye towards 5.1, since they will have a better idea of what will be needed.

This process will take you probably the better part of several months, likely closer to 6 months to a year before you would be ready to go live on 5.0, by that time, there will be a lot better picture of 5.1 upgrade requirements, and it is very likly your solution center can for a few more dollars, upgrade you straight to 5.1. (well in any case that is how it should appear to you, because they likely are going to have to convert your data to 4.0 first, then bring that into 5.0 data) If you treat it like a new install of 5.0, and just concentrate of importing your historical data, it will be a lot easier, as bring data into Navision is really a matter of mapping fields, using dataports to bring things into journals, and letting Navision post the journal to validate the data.