Hi,
I have been using Navision V5 for around a year now and we have little to no support for this product. I have managed to talk one of my higher bosses into funding some training for me. This would be for designing reports and tables needed for the company.
My Question is.
Would taking the up to date training for Navision 2013 be backwards compatible for working with Navision 5? If not any advice so I can inform my boss my plans for study would be great.
In short - the gap is too big, there are principal changes.
v2013 has only RTC (Role Tailored Client), Classic Client has gone, but in v5 the RTC wasn’t even invented yet. Reporting “systems” are completely different, too.
Then, does your company license include ReportDesigner and TableDesigner? Even if you have TableDesigner, how do you intend to get any data into them?
Last but not least - no simple course(s) will teach you creating reports. Knowing the tool doesn’t help you much, as sustainable knowledge of how NAV is built, the data structures underneath, special C/AL programming language are a must.
Believe me, it’s cheaper to outsource report creation to professionals, be it a Partner company or NAV freelancers, than train an in-house specialist from ground up AND buy all the necessary tools (granules) licenses for this person to work with.
Thanks for the info, if anything you have made me more determined with my OCD problem solving to make this work. 
So the only way of doing this is source materials from our NAV partner and look into C/AL programming further. I have a VMware lab set up with NAV installed and will spend some time tinkering about with it with some literature.
Q. How hard would the transition be to C/AL programming coming from a VB / SQL / Python background?
Well, that’s difficult… I myself have a more than 10 years programmer’s background before I moved to NAV completely. When you’re thrown into C/AL unprepared, it’s a nightmare :).
You must forget everything you know about programming when start to get into C/AL, it differs much from any other language. Here I don’t mean syntax or so - problem is, that C/AL was designed for one specific task, that is, ERP system, and with this idea in mind many specific methods and programming resources are included which are not present in any other language. If you do not know accounting theory at least at minimum level, you can’t understand HOW certain things are achieved, and WHY it must be done in that way and not another. Many good developers from object-oriented world have failed with C/AL, they simply can’t “switch” their brain to completely different way of thinking…
Hi Dave,
I’ve heard it said that C/AL is most like Visual Pascal in appearance. I think the similarity ends there though. As Modris mentioned, there is quite a bit more to developing in NAV than just learning the syntax of C/AL. It’s a bit like chess, the only easy part is learning how the pieces move. Learning to play the game is a life-long endeavor.