In this article, we would like to report on the upgrade process of a customer from the service sector.
The customer, with around 1000 employees in Germany, has around 200 users who work with Dynamics NAV on a daily basis. The objective was to upgrade from Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009 R2 Classic to Dynamics NAV 2017.
Challenge
The greatest challenges lay on the one hand in the Integration of third-party modulesof which the customer has several in use, e.g. a comprehensive project module with web time recording, a document management system and modules for electronic payment transactions. Meticulous care had to be taken to ensure that the correct version of the third-party provider was available in order to implement the objects in the correct version. On the other hand, a Wide range of customer-specific adaptations analyzed and evaluated.
The highlights of the project
In the following we would like to Highlights of the project in extracts:
The fact is that there are several 1000 Customization of objects had to be carried out. The multiple object modifications in the system had to be merged (integrated into the new object structure), which was successfully implemented.
Furthermore, the Transfer of the Reports in the new RDLC format a major challenge.
The Design of the role centers (user group-specific start screen in NAV), which were not yet available in NAV 2009 R2 and were therefore newly created, required the most precise considerations and definitions in advance. Four basic role centers were created here, depending on the area of responsibility of the employees, e.g. separate role centers for "Financial Accounting" or "Purchase requisition (BANF)".
In addition to the standard dimensions such as "cost unit" or "cost center", the customer also has a number of additional dimensions that are entered during posting.
In the old NAV 2009 R2 system, these were still in separate tables for dimensions and have now been integrated into the new dimension set ID logic which meant a major technical change.
This was also based on the decision in advance as to which adjustments should also be transferred to the new NAV 2017 system and which Modifications were no longer necessary, as they are now available as standard.
Another highlight of the upgrade was the Data migration due to the large amount of data (database size over 100 gigabytes). Routines had to be adapted here so that the data could be migrated correctly.
Procedure
Due to the complexity and high scope of change of the upgrade project, the project was divided into several smaller function packages, e.g. "Dimension management", "Document adjustment", "Interface A" etc., each of which was the responsibility of a developer.
Each package was then first tested by the developers themselves in dedicated Developer tests tested before it enters the Functional and Integration tests (checking the function in process chains) was validated with the help of key users.
The key users, who would later be responsible for transferring the know-how to other employees, were involved and trained at an early stage in the upgrade process.
After successful functional and integration tests, the tester training took place and then the End user test (acceptance test) of the employees who will later work with the system. The focus here was also on the ergonomics (user interface) and the practical usability of the built-in functionalities.
Before the system was put into operation, several more Test migration runs and the end user training. A go-live time of three days was subsequently set, during which the system was then switched live.
The technical migration took place in intermediate steps from NAV 2009 R2 to NAV 2013 (database conversion and data migration), NAV 2015 (database conversion and data migration) and finally NAV 2017 (database conversion, data migration and full object merge).
Realization of the project
The upgrade was completed in ten months and Dynamics NAV was optimized for the customer, particularly in terms of functionality.
Thanks to excellent project organization on the part of the customer and very good cooperation between the customer's development team and the developers at bartolome röder AG, the project was completed successfully and on schedule.
