Dear Questioner, I’m suspicious to answer your questions. It seems to me that if you have a valid license for this software, you would also have the support that would answer the questions that you ask. Would you be so kind as to indulge my paranoia without offense and give me a little background on your company and your relationship with Navision? Jim. ============= Does anyone ever feel like giving that response to a question? Is it ever appropriate? Should we ever worry that we are helping those that have not paid Navision properly?
Absolutely, but what can we do in an open forum - become the “Navision Police”?! Some of the questions in the forum originate from users who have purchased the software and clearly no implementation time, presumably these sites then do not take up support after the mandatory year one. So they are in the wilderness alone, with the navision.net a shining beacon of light in the world of navision blackness. Frustrating I know, but we are here to help aren’t we? Steve, a fellow paranoid user
Its a difficult one to answer. A while ago, there was a question posted about how to “cheat” the Navision developer license, i.e. to be able to write code without having purchased the solution developer, just the form designer. Yes, techinically it can be done very easily, but… isn’t this just the same as hacking? The poster in this case received a few replies. Is it valid to answer such questions? In fact NOLUG helped this user to avoid paying their NSC. Maybe even that user now will think they don’t need an NSC. In reality though, there are a few end users that struggle through without “paying their dues”. But most understand the huge investment that we have to make to learn and support the product. These are the serious customers. I don’t think we should concern ourselves to much about these few, unless it becomes clear that a particular user is using this forum to avoid ther NSC. Not for any other reason, than that true support can only be given by a long term partner. A bigger concern is where a beginner end user is asking a highly technical question, and it is clear that they are about to delve into the destruction of their system (e.g. “can I increase the length of my item no field” we all know the answer is no, and we know that if the user does it without their NSC, then in 2 months time there will be a new question “[i]how do I reduce the length of my item no back to 20”. I think this is more the question. If someone askes “how do I make a parachute” we really need to ask what they are going to do with it, and is it really the right thing to help them to hurt themselves. In any case, this is a very philosophical question, and I don’t have answers. Just more questions. _________________________ David Singleton Navision Consultant since 1991 dmks22@home.com___________
Dear Jim, sometimes you have questions that are faster solved by answering in a forum than asking to the NSC (we all know that sometimes the NSC’s are really busy and sometimes it takes them a bit more time to solve our problems that the time we need it to be solved for just a question). sometimes your NSC doesn’t know also the answer… that’s why also people working for NSC’s is making posts with questions also (may be they’re false NSC workers trying to keep us confused…). sometimes you think that what the NSC is telling you (for example that increasing the item code from 20 to 30 it’s not as simple as just changing on the item table the value of the property), it’s not the truth, so you make the question for being sure they’re not trying to charge you a big amount for an easy work. sometimes you’re wanting to have an answer to a question you’ve on a friday evening and the NSC is closed… so why to wait for an answer to Monday if you can get it on a forum. sometimes you just want to read other persons questions for learning and when reading them you have some doubts about the program and you think the best way to obtain an answer is asking where a lot of people can help you. sometimes you’re bored and just start a topic for having a nice discussion or conversation with other people… (specially when having people who likes also to give their point of view and showing another different way of solving the problem). sometimes you’ve asked your NSC but the solution they are offering you is not good enough for you, so you try to find something alternative to be done. About feeling like giving that answer… nah… i like trying to help when i’ve a bit of time. I like to think that i’ll find other people who will help me when having problems with other things. If they’re paying Navision properly or not is something i prefer not to think about, as they’ll need navision inclusively if making the modifications by themselves for sure, as the license working will make them asking for tables, reports… etc inclusively if not paying for support. We’ve to remember also that some companies (it’s not the usual thing, but some do) also buy the development license (the small one), so they prefer training a person or more and making their own changes buying the objects to their NSC than paying the NSC for making those changes… but it’s not something we should judge here (i know it’s hard when being in one of the sides… but we’ve to try to be as objectives as possible, personally i know both sides, as i was working in a Navision customer before starting working for an NSC, and we bought on that company the development license for developing a full mod for our company…). Regards Alfonso Pertierra (Spain)apertierra@teleline.es
Hi, longtime we had no questions to ask our NSC. I believe therefore we changed our contract with the NSC. Now, I have to pay for any question I send to our NSC. (BTW we changed the contract long before I became member of NOLUG, so we didn’t change the contract because of the “free support” in NOLUG) Sure, if the question has a high priority I spend the money. But there’s an other point: My NSC switched to Financials and we are using the blue one! His supporters don’t know 3.56! So I’m glad that there some members who remember 3.56 or who are still using it! This is my reason questioning in NOLUG. Greetings Marc
Jim, I know I’m here because: a) I sometimes get some very valuable help and ideas from people like you. You (and others here) have experience and creative ideas that help me work myself out of the holes I get into by “pushing the envelope”. b) I enjoy the opportunity to use my knowledge and experience to help others. I also enjoy the challenging problems that are sometimes presented (there might be just a touch of ego in that too). Plus, if I give a reasonably high percentage of useful answers, my appearance here could be good PR for my Navision consulting business. When I think the questioner is taking significant advantage of our “free” services, I just ignore the question and move on. If it appears they are asking for something I feel they should be paying for, I may point out where they can purchase it. But sometimes, even if the question is something they should be going to their NSC or NTR with, if I find the topic interesting enough or particularly challenging or think it has a reasonable chance of having broad interest, I try to help out. I find this decision to help or not a very subjective thing. I pretend no great consistency in my own actions. And I don’t see any good way to keep the problem of inappropriate requests from happening when the structure is as free and open as Navision.Net. I recently suggested to a contact that they post a query here because I didn’t know how to help them, their NSC wasn’t succeeding, and I didn’t want to be the go-between for them and the ideas they might get from here. So I might even have been the one to create the situation you described. I’m just thankful to have access myself to this forum and I appreciate all the help that you and others have given me (some of which I should probably have paid for). Dave Studebaker das@libertyforever.com Liberty Grove Software A Navision Services Partner