With the release of Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010 the relationship between internal line of business applications and business productivity software is stronger than ever. There have been added many exciting new features, which will bring value to many customers, including those customers that are using Microsoft Dynamics NAV today.
User Interface
The user interface (UI) is the “face” of a software application – A good user interface is intuitive, familiar, and easy to use. It improves productivity by minimizing the number of clicks required to get a task done. This is what we accomplished with the release of the RoleTailored client in Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009. The Fluent UI is now used by all Microsoft Office programs as well as SharePoint Server 2010, and does away with menus, which were growing increasingly complex, replacing them with a clear set of icons that are relevant to the task being performed.
With the 2010 release, Microsoft Office, Microsoft SharePoint Server, and Microsoft Dynamics now share this strong “facial” resemblance, making them more consistent to use and easier to adopt.
Connectivity
Just as beauty is more than skin deep, so the ties between Microsoft Dynamics and Microsoft’s business productivity infrastructure run deeper than just the UI. Business Connectivity Services (BCS) is a new technology that crosses Microsoft Office 2010 and Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010, and can be thought of as “plumbing” for connecting business applications through Web Services in Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009 with SharePoint and Office. This is no ordinary plumbing, though, as it enables some powerful new scenarios for Microsoft Dynamics NAV customers, including the ability to update information stored in a Microsoft Dynamics NAV database directly from a SharePoint site, and making it easier to take Microsoft Dynamics NAV information offline through either Outlook 2010 or SharePoint Workspace 2010.
Analysis
The majority of Microsoft Dynamics customers use Microsoft Excel to analyze their business information. PowerPivot for Microsoft Excel 2010 offers the ability to quickly create PivotTables or PivotCharts that are pulling in data from Microsoft Dynamics ERP or CRM in real time. New Excel 2010 features such as Slicers and Sparklines can then be added to bring the numbers to life and gain deeper insights into what’s happening in the business.
Compatibility
Since Microsoft Dynamics NAV always has had a strong integration to the Office and SharePoint products, we are proud to announce that Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009 SP1 and Microsoft Dynamics NAV 5.0 SP1 Update 2 are compatible with Microsoft Office 2010 and Microsoft SharePoint 2010!
The details in the support for the different Office and SharePoint integrations are listed below. Please note that Office 2010 is available in both a 32-bit version and a 64-bit version, but some NAV areas are currently not supported in the 64-bit version. The recommended version of Office 2010 in combination with NAV is the 32-bit version. Further reading on the difference between the two versions can be found here: http://blogs.technet.com/b/office2010/archive/2010/02/23/understanding-64-bit-office.aspx.
- Employee Portal is supported for SharePoint 2010. However please look at KB970502 for instructions on how to install in a 64-bit environment.
- Sending data from Microsoft Dynamics NAV to both Word and Excel using the basic export is fully compatible with Microsoft Office Word 2010 and Microsoft Office Excel 2010. The same applies exporting to Excel from reports and to Export of budgets, Analysis Schedules etc.
- Interactions such as letters can be initiated from Microsoft Dynamics NAV and stored as appropriate in Microsoft Office Word 2010 in both 32-bit and 64-bit version.
- Sending emails from Microsoft Dynamics NAV is compatible with Outlook 2010 32-bit version, but is currently not supported for the 64 bit version.
- Outlook Synchronization is compatible with Outlook 2010 32-bit version. The installation and the add-in is not currently supported for the 64- bit version.
- Email logging is dependent on CDO, which is not supported in Office 2010. Please read http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2028411. A possible workaround has been identified by manual installing CDO in combination with KB2291071, but it is recommended to stay on Office 2007 if email logging is required.