Sharepoint and Wikis

For me one of the most exciting new features in WSS 3.0 is the inbuilt Wiki functionality. Over the last few years Wikis have taken the internet by storm particularly the wikipedia.org website. Essentially Wikis are a collaborative writing tool used to produce knowledge bases. You might ask what can a Wiki do that can’t be done with a word document? I think the key advantages are:

• Linking. When creating a Wiki it easy to link to other web pages even ones that don’t already exist. For example if I was creating a Wiki about Alphameric. I might write “Alphameric provide ERP solutions using Microsoft Dynamics-Nav”. Simply by placing double square brackets around any word which I think might need to be looked up will provide a Hyperlink. So the sentence would look like this “Alphameric provide [[ERP]] solutions using [[Microsoft]] [[Dynamics-Nav]]”. When someone comes to read my Alphameric Wiki they may not understand what an ERP is so they can click on the link. If a web page has been created for ERP then they will be taken to it otherwise they will be presented with a blank Wiki where they are invited to add a definition of an ERP.
• Ad-Hoc. Wiki writing is informal, you can start an article and leave it as unfinished “Stub”. The next user who comes along can then finish it.
• Open ended. Users can create pages about absolutely anything. There is a flexibility which is unachievable with conventional documentation methods.

Here are some things I believe we could use Wikis for:

• Customer Information. What the customer does, who works there, what they are like, what software was is installed, what products they might be interested in?
• Software Documentation. Both internally and at customer sites. Following a new install we could provide customers with a documentation Wiki, they/we are then free to modify this as they learn more about the product or developments change.
• Projects. Information can be provided by Project Manager relating to progress, deliverables etc.
• Human Resource. Employee profiles, Tax Office Info, Pay Info, Health and Safety. Any new employees could be advised to spend a few hours with the Wikis to work out what we do.

Any thoughts?

New Features in Dynamics-NAV 5.0

Mibuso has a powerpoint presentation from Tech-Ed 2006 on New Development Features of the Upcoming Release of Microsoft Dynamics NAV 5.0. There is some interesting new stuff in there and I urge you all to have a look.

The new developments looks fantastic, this is a huge step forward and should create many opportunities.

I see the following plus points:

• Multi threaded three tier model. Should improve performance and scalability.
• Nothing has to change if the customer is happy with current architecture then it can remain and they will still benefit from the new UI.
• Role based UI. This is now the standard ERP approach for large companies. Adding to the possibility of targeting companies with 100+ users.
• SQL server Reporting Services. This is essentially a huge upgrade for all reporting. Scalability is improved as reporting can be handled by a separate server. All reports can be hosted by SharePoint. Standard reports can be improved with features such as drill down and charts.
• Main development still performed exclusively with CAL C/SIDE.
• Integrated Web Services. This will allows us to far easily create Web Sites and Mobil Application which integrate fully with NAV.
• Vastly improved User Experience (UX). This product should demo like a dream.

There are a few negatives:

• The main problem is all code must be recompiled when any code is changed. Hopefully this will not be a permanent change, but if it is bug fixing/ support will become trickier.
• Because of the integration with SQL Reporting Services report development will take longer, however features will be improved.
• Web services will be created in CAL and then precompiled into C#. However we will have no access to the C# code, meaning certain performance issues may be difficult to resolve as we are dependent on code created by a translator. Hopefully this will change before release.

Hello

Welcome to my blog.  As part of my new role I spend a lot of time reading up on the emmerging Microsoft technologies.  I thought it would be a neat idea if I could share some of the cool/interesting stuff I’ve found with the Navision Team, and what better way to do that than a blog?

I encourage everyone to leave comments about what’s posted and hope this blog can spur some interesting discussions.  The blog is open to the world, so if I feel any of the posts contain sensitive info they will be password protected.

If you have any comments about the blog or post suggestions let me know.

Thanks

Jemel