Hi people, This forum should not be used to replace NSC training. So if you know the answer is clear enough and easy to understand in the manual, or it is a matter of not enough training. Then refer the poster back to the NSC or the manual. If the poster says “I tried this and that, but the information I have is not enough for me”,or “I am thinking of purchasing XX granule and need input to make that chioce”, then a detailed answer is the way forward. These are my personal views, what do others think? David Cox MindSource (UK) Limited Navision Solutions Partner Email: david@mindsource.co.uk Web: www.mindsource.co.uk
I am sorry to say I don’t agree at all. I think all posts in this forum should be treated with full respect. Of course This Forum is not a Training Center, but it should give enough information for anybody to understand Navision. By answering questions on this forum, that could be answered by taking a training, not only the one that asks the question is helped, it’s also a way to refresh the memory of the people that answer the questions. I look at this forum as a big gathering of people that work with navision. Here we share knowledge for free, without any other intention than to share. … I didn’t learn Navision from the manual or trainings I took, I learned Navision on this forum. With regards Anolis Sittard Netherlands
Dave Whilst I can see the frustration of answering simple questions I feel that the answers themselves will never cover all required, they are pointers. As you are aware there are many ways to do the same thing, and one answer whilst right in one instance may not help in another. I presume this stems from Agatha’s recent spurt of questions, but wherever we point her it will only solve part of her problem, as she will soon stumble into more - whilst I believe she should be getting proper training to enable her to gain the full benefit of Navision from her NSC, we shouldn’t turn questions away here. It is frustrating, but should we turn away the cries fo rhelp? Steve Steven Weaver XONITEK Systems (UK) Ltd +44 (0) 23 80641175 (Tel) +44 (0) 23 80641173 (Fax)
A chinese idiom says: “If your friend is hungry, give him a fish. If you really love him, teach him fishing”. In this sense I second David as it should not be our goal to present a solution for a specific problem if the answer can easily be found in the documentation. If - instead of solving the problem - we point the user to the right direction, the source of information, we can help him better: We teach him how he can solve his problems alone and can concentrate on the really important and difficult questions. There might also be users which are simply too lazy to RTFM and ask all questions to this forum. ------- With best regards from Switzerland Marcus Fabian Edited by - fabian on 2001 Mar 24 01:14:38
Sorry guys. If the User is pointed to and follows examples from training or manuals there may be other things they will learn. take Agatha’s Question on application of Customer Ledgers. I don’t know if the manual will tell her that she can select the lines by highlighting several of them randomly then press F9 to mark all the selected lines with the “Applies to ID” but her NSC’s training should, but answers on this forum would not. If she had 1000 lines to deal with and applied them one at a time she may think Navision is a poor product in this area. Putting a “Date Filter” for period’s 1 to 3, as P1…P3 and not 01/01/01…31/03/01 etc: By her questions we can see that she has not had the level of training from her NSC and should encourage her to use her NSC’s customer support or get futher training. EG: I have seen lots of instances at customer sites where the user has not been getting the optimum from Navision due to lack of or no proper training, one company I went to the lady in the accounts department was spending a whole day creating manual payments posting then applying, she had never seen the “Suggest Vendor Payments” which cut the time spent to two hours. David Cox MindSource (UK) Limited Navision Solutions Partner Email: david@mindsource.co.uk Web: www.mindsource.co.uk
We are in Canada. We can not find any training offered by Navison. Our NSC is new to the product as well and is overwhelmed with other sales and other installations. We went live in December and only last week did we get an invoice where we did not have to manually stamp our company name on it. We have several similar unresolved issues. I have read the manuals. I have done the CBT’s, I have spent hours upon hours trying to solve problems myself. If I ask a “simple” question, please do not send me to the book to look for it. I am tired and frustrated and just want an answer. I am assuming others are in similar positions. I really hope Navision starts to provide some training sessions, (basic and advanced) in Canada or North America. By the way, I have received some really good information from this forum, and I appreciate the effort from those who have taken the time to reply.
Hi people, This is End Users forum and I hope most of people who ask questions here working for Navision end clients not for NSC. David, Do you tell your customer to read page XX from manual when they ask you for HELP? I think not. But I agree that a lot of end users never even try to open Navision documentation. And I think we should answer all question and also point on article in the Navision documentation. Valentin Gvozdev BMI Inc.
To contribute my $0.02 I believe nobody asks questions without a reason. Be it confusion or overwhelming, be it lack of skill, or be it curiousity or getting help on finding other ways. Some reason will always be there and I don’t want to be a judge on the validity of it. Of course, a question like “how do I have to do bookkeeping?” has little chance of getting an answer, but usually I understand why somebody is asking a question. If I know an answer I will give it - that’s the basic idea behind this forum. And we do know by now, that users are not getting the same level of training everywhere. Not all NSC are as skilled as might be desired, and not all developers are having the same level either. What other places do all have available to go to and find info? By looking at the questions, in special at the End-user section, you even may get a few hints on what topics you should emphasize when you are doing a training… John
We had this debate a few years ago. Actually it was back in the “good old” majordomo mailing list days. As I did back then I do now not think that this forum is supposed to be a replacement for a support agreement with an NSC, nor is it supposed to be a replacement for training. Most of the people here are actually NSC employees - and selling support agreements/training services is an important part of our companies business. But as Parker writes, sadly enough this service is not available at all NSC’s or the quality of the service available is not good enough. (This is a different debate - but would be fun to take as well. So it’s a little about thinking what’s the real nature of the question. For as long as NOLUG has existed I can only remember a few (less then five) times where I have felt that the questioner where misusing NOLUG. In general people are professionals. Often the user documentation available from Navision can also be blaimed. Although it has become better over the years, then it’s still what it is, and many people have a big problem with computer system manuals. One of the goals of the coming months is go collect a FAQ (freqently asked questions) for all forums - especially this one and the developer forums. This is the task of the moderators. Fell free to contact them (please private mail) with subjects/topics that you think should be included in the FAQ. Best regards, Erik P. Ernst, webmaster Navision Online User Group
I just wrote a long post but lost it, dont know how the computer hang, then came back and “POW” it was gone. The basics of my post were :- 1. We are paid by our NSC’s to develop and support our Customers. 2. We all post on NOLUG as a group of people combinig our efforts to resolve issues that a single NSC could not. 3. Are we going to get to the point that jobs are effected by NOLUG because we are answering questions endusers should be using their NSC for? 4. The developer forum with a post in it about a user who though his NSC had done a bad job and was asking how to develop in the system, he got the response that he should talk to navision I believe in the end. But are we going to get to the point where end users can learn to develop their own system for free from this forum? I am a developer and I get paid to modify system for our customers. One customer decided that they wanted to purchase the report designed because one of their users had used one before. I recommned against it as reports can be dangerous if not used correctly. But they have it and now I answer at least 5 questions a week to the customer that are a waste of tiem, we get no money for it, its on the support contract. I guarntee that if that user new about this site he would be on it all the time with stupid question that should not be asked on NOLUG they should be asked to the NSC thats what they get paid for. The bare roots of what I am saying is NOLUG should be careful of the questions it answers, if a question is so simple that it should be a phone call/Email away we should say so, end-users are going to get to the point that they dont want to pay support because they get it free here, but I get my wages from some of that support. I dont dissagree with NOLUG in fact I ask questions of others because I have no NSC to ask I am working for one and sometimes to ask on the NOLUG is easier than to ask the Head Developer who is under alot of work. But I will try to find an answer before I pose the questions I will Read the Application developers hand book and I will fiddle to try to make things work. Hope that all the makes sense.
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Originally posted by Parker Foord: We are in Canada. We can not find any training offered by Navison. Our NSC is new to the product as well and is overwhelmed with other sales and other installations. We went live in December and only last week did we get an invoice where we did not have to manually stamp our company name on it. We have several similar unresolved issues.
Actually, Navision Canada DOES offer training but only to Canadian and US NSCs, channel partners, and Navision corporate staff. (The Navision Academies in the two countries work together, since accounting is much the same in both countries, aside from a few different acronyms.) Generally speaking, end users can NOT go those classes. Your NSC is supposed to provide YOUR training classes. It sounds like they did a less than fabulous job. That’s too bad. Your options are to work out a better training deal with your current NSC, or to find a new one. As for the “unresolved” issues, you have them in every installation— every Navision installation and every competing product’s installation. Navision tends to get installed a lot quicker than PeopleSoft, SAP, etc., so be glad you only have a wait a few months to get these issues taken care of. You also mentioned (in an earlier post) problems with your Navision installation not fitting your organization’s work flow: if your current setup works OK, I would try living with it for a while before deciding to redesign it. Your work flow will in many cases evolve to fit the new system (just as it evolved in the first place to fit your old system.) My experience with Navision is that it flows pretty well: most tasks can be accomplished smoothly in a logical fashion. My experience with transitioning from a legacy system to Navision is that customers often do the same tasks in somewhat contorted ways to fit in with the limitations of their old business systems. The problem with the company name was a simple one. The standard invoice report has fields for the company name and address built in. It is odd that this was left off your customized report… What was up with that? ------- Tim Horrigan horrigan@aol.com
Quote: 1. We are paid by our NSC’s to develop and support our Customers. Myself and Marcus are not employees of an NSC, like many other on NOLUG the answers we give are in our own time not our customers, I have answered many a valid end user question in detail if I think that the end user knows enough about Navision, but has come up against a grey area that is not well documented or easy to understand. A few about opening transaction posting which is not an everyday posting for the end users. And some in the Development area for the undocumented or hard to understand C/AL functions I owe a lot to this forum and Erik’s hard work, over 5 years from the early email days! So I have no problem in answering questions at any level, I just felt that no effort had been made by the poster to even try to understand the area of the question before posting to this forum! David Cox MindSource (UK) Limited Navision Solutions Partner Email: david@mindsource.co.uk Web: www.mindsource.co.uk Edited by - David Cox on 2001 Mar 27 00:17:53
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Originally posted by tonyh: I guarntee that if that user new about this site he would be on it all the time with stupid question that should not be asked on NOLUG they should be asked to the NSC thats what they get paid for.
I can promise you otherwise: One day the customer will have realized that he is not able to do all the reports himselfes. This day, he will be creeping back to you, beg for help and you will have even more hours to sell. Not only to program the reports he wants but also to correct the objects he spoiled. — Humans tend to look for the cheapest solutions. We are basically lazy and want to achieve our task with the least amount of energy spent. If we can ask a question in a forum before having a lunch break then coming back and find 4 solutions from which we can select the best one, then we will choose this source of information rather than turning our back and look for this little blue book in the book-shelf. It is now up to us whether we decide to give a direct answer to this user, to guide him to the right direction or to ignore his request, forcing him to take matters into his own hands. ------- With best regards from Switzerland Marcus Fabian
As a customer I find some of these replies quite humorous. The fears regarding customers wanting to become developers, or gaining enough knowledge to become developers, or being to cheap to pay for developement, etc. should be dispensed with. Developers will always be needed and in fact, the more knowledgeable the customers are, the more they will understand what is possible, the more they will understand their own limitations as part-time non-developers, the more work they will want done, and the more they will understand why you guys charge as much as you do. I can not speak for others, but this is certainly the case for me, (although I still think you guys cost too much). It is very hard to ask for something you do not even know is possible, or possibly possible. As I have stated before, humorous by answering our simple questions. Most of us are pretty busy at our regular jobs and sometimes it is simply faster and easier to ask a question rather than learning the manuals. Sometimes we are simply looking for new options to a problem that our NSC did not provide. If a particular person is abusing this service then simply ignore them. Horrigan, I can not answer as to why we had such difficulty getting our name on our invoices. It got to the point where our customers were making fun of us and our purchase of Navision - $200K spent and we can not even get our name on our invoices. suffice it to say I am not impressed. By the way, I do not agree that we should be happy, based on the premise that - others are worse. Surely that is not the standard Navision has set for itself.
Finally Parker! Thank You! I agree. We are a small company that bit the bullet, so to speak 3 years ago and purchased Navision for long term growth. Love the program itself, but we cannot get proper support here in Central Florida. Our NSC offers training, but from trainers that have recently attended class themselves. Training has not been formalized and is held by people that we cannot get straight direct answers from on simple questions. We are on our second NSC here in Central Florida and are still dealing with elementary problems. We have had numerous meetings discussing the minor issues. During these meetings, issues are discussed and answered with “let me look into it, that doesn’t sound right and I’ll get back to you”. Finally, I am forced to create lists of “pending issues” to monitor that questions are answered. My list is now 6 pages long. (Shouldn’t the NSC be keeping this list?) One issue was recently resolved 4 weeks later with “do you really need it?” when they were not able to find a solution. Suggest Vendor Payments creates a list of outstanding vendor invoices. One of the columns state “Due Date”. To me, this column should list the invoice due date of each individual listed invoice. This column is populated with today’s date, in my system. I posed this question to our NSC. The response to me was “After a couple of conversations with Navision, I am informed that the field “Due Date” on the Payment Journal has nothing to do with the Invoice Due Date. I was given a fairly long explanation, the jist of which is that the field really has no function.” When I replied asking how a field could have NO function, I was given a suggestion on development to gain access to vendor invoice due dates in the table. Well, that is all fine, but, I really didn’t get an answer to my original question. What is this field for, if not for due date of vendor invoices? This is a very minor recent example of the issues that we have continuously run into. When introduced to Navision, we had big plans for development, but when it takes this much effort to resolve one simple question, we are very wary to start a large development task with an NSC that cannot get us through these simple questions. The NSC would be making much more money if he could get us through this “initial” phase, so we can start thinking of developing further. After all, we also have a business to run. I DO understand that you guys need to make money, but why have an end user Forum, if not for end user questions. Anyway, I’m here out of desperation to get answers on basic questions. Believe me, if I could find an answer in documentation, I certainly wouldn’t go through my NSC before trying just that. Change NSC? Well this is my second. I have already been through this similar issue with our original NSC. We spent 6 months from purchase to live date because every time a live date was planned, something would come up at the last minute so that we would not be able to launch, or our contact person would quit the company (3 in six months). When we finally did go live, it took 5 weeks before we were up and running at a level that we could run routine transactions within the system. We also upgraded this last December and windows login and roles issues has yet to be resolved in accordance to what was set up in previous version. Now 4 months later, I receive a quote to redevelop the mods to our our prior version. Shouldn’t this have been part of the upgrade cost? Well, I feel better now…thanks for your ear.
Thoien (?), When you would have asked the question about due dates in this forum, you would have gotten a bit different reply 
Somebody would have told you that the Due Date of the payment journal should not be mistaken for the due date of vendor invoices. The latter one is determined by adding the payment terms for this vendor (as setup on the vendor card) to the posting date of the invoice. The payment journal due date is the date when the payment in this journal will be effected. You can prepare your journal(s) in advance and use the due date (or payment date if you prefer) for credit management. Tip: in case you wonder about the function or purpose of a field (you’re right - out of the box Navision has no “useless” fields), use the context sensitive (a.k.a. What’s this?) Help. Click the “question mark plus arrow” button in the toolbar, then click the field of interest. The corresponding Help topic will pop up and will give a description of the field and its related topics. Not everything will be clear at once, but it may give some understanding. And a list of invoices due… isn’t that the standard Vendor - Summary Aging report? It’s a real pity you don’t get a proper support. Feel free to post your questions here. John
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Finally, I am forced to create lists of “pending issues” to monitor that questions are answered. My list is now 6 pages long. (Shouldn’t the NSC be keeping this list?)
No, it’s in your own interest to keep and maintain this list (the NSC has a copy of course). The reason is that you are the one to decide when a point is being deleted from this list. The Programmer might think he corrected the problem and delete the task but you - as user - are the only one who really knows. Besided, end-users never give positive feedback (telling “Point 25 is ok and can be deleted”) they only give feedback on errors. So the programmer would have to keep track of deleting tasks where no feedback was received within x days. Quite tricky.
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"After a couple of conversations with Navision, I am informed that the field “Due Date” on the Payment Journal has nothing to do with the Invoice Due Date.
This statement from the NSC is (sorry for this aggressive, rude language) bullshit! Fact is that the Invoice Due Date is exactly what you think it is. If you run “suggest vendor payment” and want to have all bills paied with due-date <= tomorrow this field is exactly the filter criteria for the vendor ledger entries to be selected. However for the payment posting lines the due-date is the date of payment: Invoice: due date is due date Credit Memo: due date is document date Payment: due date is payment date I’m working as trouble-shooter in the navision world and therefore have some experience with projects where an NSC failed to show the necessary competence and know-how and finally need an expert to pull the project “out of the mud”. Speaking for Navision I would like to appologize for the incompetence of your NSC!
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we are very wary to start a large development task with an NSC that cannot get us through these simple questions.
Personally I think that - for me - your statement has one positive aspect. Last August I started to look for Navision Jobs in the USA. So far without success. Florida is a beautiful and warm place and after what I hear about the competence of NSC’s (at least two) in Florida, it looks like I could have good chances to get a nice job down there
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I DO understand that you guys need to make money, but why have an end user Forum, if not for end user questions.
The point is that we (here in this forum) are doing a job for free which should be done by an NSC who is being paied for it. That’s unfair. However I believe that doing this free support here might do some good to calm frustrated customers down and keep other customers happy. Both is for the benefit of Navision. As we all depend from the health of Navision we indirectly help ourselfes.
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… I receive a quote to redevelop the mods to our our prior version. Shouldn’t this have been part of the upgrade cost?
No, this is not part of the upgrade contract. The upgrade contract only covers “technical” upgrade which means Installation of the latest Fin.EXE but without the new functionality of the new version. This is one of the disadvantages with Navision: You can develop every modification - even in the core routines. But with new releases you have to re-build all user modifications. ------- With best regards from Switzerland Marcus Fabian
I also agree with all Marcus has said regarding this thread and also apologise that Thoien was given such incorrect answers to what was some very basic functionality. All that I can say to Thoien in particular is that I am glad that despite that. You are still happy with Navision. I also agree with John that if at any time you are unsure of what a particular field does or what its purpose is. Please use the help as this usually provides some good answers. Albeit it will not do so for any of the customized fields that your NSC may have added. Please feel free to post your questions here. Wendy