Directions 2017 – Keynote – Dynamics 365 “Tenerife”

I’m just done with the keynote, and have been writing down quite some notes – so I figured, why not turn this into a blogpost ;-). One with a very clear disclaimer: all the below, is how I percieved it, and might deviate from whatever Microsoft was trying to make clear to us. I repeat this every time I write a blog like this: I’m not good at this Marketing and Business sessions like Keynotes. But hey, I try ;-).

Full focus for the Cloud!

That was a clear message! Microsoft is still all-in. Quotes like “we’ll fully focus on the cloud” .. “we’ll first make sure the experience in the cloud is like it should be, and then …”. Let’s not be surprised about this. Do know though, there was absolutely no indication during the entire keynote, that support for on premise business would disappear – even there was a confirmation that there is no intention to kill off On Premise business. Just – there is a clear focus on what the market wants … cloud!

In a nutshell:

Dynamics 365 “Tenerife”

That’s how the next version of NAV is called. I have a feeling I shouldn’t be saying “NAV” anymore – then again – you know what I mean. “Tenerife” is a codename though – when there actually is a release (no release date was shared during this session), there will be a final product name. So, in short, knowing what we know now:

  • Dynamics 365 “Tenerife” is the next version of NAV
  • Dynamics 365 “Tenerife” is the next iteration of Dynamics 365

Full NAV Functionality in Dynamics 365

Finally a formal confirmation from Microsoft that our beloved NAV platform in the cloud, called Dynamics 365 today, is going to have FULL NAV functionality! Not only “Financials”, but the full app! Confirmed! I hold you to it, Microsoft ;-).

And not only that, you will be able to take your customized solution – as is – to Dynamics 365! Dynamics 365 “Tenerife” enables that. Microsoft still recommends Extensions – obviously – but it is not a full requirement anymore. We’re talking embed apps, and I can imagine limitations will come if you draw that card – so, if possible, let’s do Extensions! Let’s do a true app!

But – Microsoft listened – embed apps are going to be possible.

Common Data Services

CDS is a very key part in whole Microsoft as a company. It’s connecting all these Microsoft products with each other .. through CDS .. For all of this software to work together. .

We have seen a demo during the Keynote, that – I think – kind of like illustrated that. The invoicing app that comes with O365, which you can use on for example an iPhone, where you can create an invoice, which you see in the Business Center in O365, where you have prices that come from D365 Business logic … you know .. Cool stuff. More to come when somebody can wrap their head around it ;-).

First Look at Dynamics 365 “Tenerife”

Basically: Demo Time! Let me quickly go over of what I picked up of it.

Full Functionality

I understood that the full functionality is basically already there in the preview sandbox – you can simply enable it with the Sandbox Wizard (just search for the page).
Switch Rolecenter

You can now very simple change role center from the web client, without sign out/sign in. Very simple. Same is for changing companies, by the way.

Import data has been improved. Not only master data from quickbooks are imported, but also documents, like sales and purchase invoices, balances, … . It’s very easy to take for example quickbooks customers to D365 Tenerife.

One place to find all setup, like:

  • Assisted setup
  • Service connections
  • Posting groups – which have been made easier by a method that is called “suggest accounts”

New notifications to run more smoothly – we saw an example on Purchase Order, where Yannick punched in a “vendor invoice number” that was already used.

New interactions with excel – to “edit” the journal in excel. Even additional lines could be added from within excel. Basically, that’s how accountants like to work!

Invite Accountant

You can give your accountant access to your system by use of a wizard. Very useful for giving your specific accountant access, but it doesn’t stop there – it will also enable you to select from companies in a list, that would be able to provide accounting services for you ..

Yannick also showed that it recognized contact pictures, filling in a profile to recognise gender and age.. . All with Azure Services, which Microsoft is more-and-more consuming.

Personalize

You will be able to personalize your user experience in the client. Not exactly the same as the In-App designer, but not that different. You can add, remove and move parts of fields and quite some more – all for you individually.

Platform

Also, terms of “behind the scenes”, quite some things were shared, like these impressive stats:

  • In 7 seconds, they are able to set up a new tenant, and make a new environment operation for the user. That is “hyper scale“, people!
  • The data-upgrade is about 30 seconds per tenant – this is the time that the system will be offline – but it’s fast! But it obviously depends on the amount of data – don’t know anything about that.. .
  • D365 has a 99.9% up-time. How they do that, is with something that is called “auto-healing“. How I understood it, the system has many telemetrics it can depend on, so it will know when something is not going well. And if it notices that, and it knows how to fix it (like restore NST or something), it will do that – without waiting for the customer to complain it doesn’t work. Basically, when something is wrong, Microsoft follows these steps:
    • Get customer running
    • Fix the bug (if any) in the system
    • Build telemetry so that it doesn’t happen again

    Impressive!

You will be able to extend Tenerife

As already mentioned – Appsource will be extended to enable consulting offerings! Yep, you read that right! You can define a fixed price offering, on AppSource!

What I read from this, is that you will be able to (sorry for the somewhat unreadable slide)

These will become available right inside D365 Tenerife. AppSource is there to Build with you, Market with you and Sell with you!

In-App designer

Quite the same as personalization, but when you stop the designer, you have the opportunity to save the changes – you can take the changes, and deploy it on a different tenant.

It is basically the generated code that you get, that kind of like enables this In-App designer as being a great to for developers as well!

API’s

Dynamics 365 “Tenerife” will come with about 44 pre-defined API’s, which can be used to connect third-party system to NAV.

You don’t really need an NAV background to be able to integrate with it.

Accountant hub

This was cool to see – but I could have had slightly the wrong picture. Then again – this is what I got out of it.

Microsoft has created some kind of “Account Hub” app, on the Dynamics 365 platform, for accountants to connect to their clients.

Remember that for the user, there is a wizard to “invite” their accountant. Well, for the accounts – if invited – there is functionality to easily manage multiple of these customers, by providing functionality, like:

  • List of customers with basic data
  • Reports pulled from the customer
  • Specific tasks per customer
  • Ability to connect to the customer’s tenant (assuming he was invited ;-))
  • It will navigate straight to the specific page to perform the specific task

Bookings

Every single O365 is already running the product .. will have a Dynamics 365 “Tenerife” backend. So they are ready to extend with our apps, our extensions, … . One Demo we have seen, is an integration with the “Booking”-ability in O365, where companies like Hairdressers, who wants the ability to have online appointment registration.

The scenario we have seen was:

  • On Facebook of a racing-company to maintain race-cars, there is a “Book Now” button to book an appointment
  • You needed to select what you need to do (maintenance)
  • who could do that (certain technician)
  • Date and time (obviously)

And it was going to add this in the O365 calendar – and not only that – it was also visible in a part of some customized part of Dynamics 365 “Tenerife”. Also the data for the Staff-list, and the kind of services, was data that came from the App in Dynamics 365.
Integration with outlook

Also on the Outlook-integration, Microsoft has expanded. We saw a demo where from quote-thru-payment, all was done from Outlook.

  • Customer sends some text in mail, very unstructured
  • Company pushed button that scans the unstructured message, and puts it in a quote with 3 lines
  • Sense quote (remember: still all-in Outlook)
  • Customer in outlook replies “Ok for me”
  • Company gets email and functionality figures out which document from contact and document number in the mail, and posts invoice and send it.
  • Customer receives a mail with invoice – and “Pay” link. Customer can pay with one of his cards that are linked to his Microsoft account.

As a conclusion, this is what we are up for this week:

  • 12 workshops
  • 60 breakout sessions
  • 14 town halls
  • 56 speakers
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.waldo.be/2017/09/18/directions-2017-keynote-dynamics-365-tenerife/

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  1. Hi Waldo,
    Thank you for your update, nice when I couldn’t be there myself. Some years back there were always 2-3 blog posts right after each Navision conference keynote. If you should mention only one thing about “Tenerife” that excite you the most, what would it be?

    • Cristi Nicola on September 18, 2017 at 11:28 am
    • Reply

    Hi Waldo,

    Is NAV Tenerife the so called NAV 2019 and there is a NAV 2018 being released this autumn like previous years or are they going straight to Tenerife. Sorry if dumb question but am a bit confused from the email and the fact that I have not seen much comments about what 2018 brings.

      • waldo on September 18, 2017 at 12:40 pm
        Author

      Well, I expect no release this autumn (though, no official communication yet). No release dates or product names were communicated (yet?) .. . What I do know is that “Tenerife” is not the name that will be used when all this is released.. .

      • Andrew Warnica on September 21, 2017 at 5:47 pm

      Hi Cristi – long time no see!
      NAV 2018 = Tenerife and it is delayed until the spring. Marko said it was ‘code complete’ and that they were trying to get the marketing & pricing sorted out and have delayed 6 months.
      I asked in another session if we could expect a 2018 version in fall of 2018, and was told that ‘it might not be called 2018 anymore’ and that ‘a defined release cycle hasn’t been determined yet’.

    • Mohammed Anwar Shaikh on September 18, 2017 at 4:55 pm
    • Reply

    Hi Waldo,

    Nice update, does that mean the Apps developed for D365 for Financials can also be used by Dynamics 365 Tenerife.

    We are in mid of developing our IP on D365 for Financials and feeling lost, between D365 for Financials and Dynamics 365 for Tenerife. For Example our IP uses the Production BOM and we cannot see Production BOM in D365 for Financials.

    Can you please help us with little more information on this.

      • waldo on September 19, 2017 at 1:42 pm
        Author

      Yes they will, but you’ll have to convert them at some point to “Version 2” (VSCode – al language).
      Microsoft promised “full functionality” in Tenerife, so I guess the Production BOM will be there – not sure, you’ll have to have Microsoft confirm this.

    • Hannes Holst on September 26, 2017 at 11:20 am
    • Reply

    Cool – looking forward to CDS!

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