All you know this slogan “Make America Great Again” (abbreviated as MAGA) from a Donald Trump presidential campaign. But did you know that president Ronald Reagan used the similar slogan “Let’s Make America Great Again” in his 1980 presidential campaign? Why I’m talking about this?

For me there is a difference.

Make (without Let’s) means that somebody (in case of America – president, in case of Business Central – Microsoft) will make all the job by himself. But! If we add Let’s, it is not about one person anymore, it’s about society (in case of America), and community (in case of Business Central ex. NAV).

So yes, this blog is about Let’s. Moving forward.

Dynamics 365 Business Central is not released yet, so why I use word Again?

Simple. Business Central is revolution of Dynamics NAV. And NAV has strong community, 31 years of history, 150K+ customers and millions of users. So, it was successful product. And I believe, it would be even more successful. 

Next is my opinion on how to achieve that. You are welcomed to agree or disagree and to leave comments.

Many, many, many Apps

Some years ago, I chose for my company task tracker. I searched for cloud software, that could be used for support team, project team, developers, customers. Simple, flexible, cheap, beautiful, with time tracking, with documentations tools, with reports and so on.

And what do you think, did I find such solution, which would meet all my requirements?

No, but

I found Jira. It was, at those moment, simple cloud task tracker without all functionality what I needed.  But It had a marketplace. And there I found all those features I needed, among 1,5K apps for Jira. Of course, I bought it.

Microsoft has created Microsoft AppSource for us. And now, since 1,5 year after release, there are 49 apps. 49! We need much, much more. I agree, that this are investments, difficult validation process, reeducation, time and so on. But we should go there and give our customers more possibilities and opportunities with Business Central.

Latest release of modern development environment has built-in tools for making process simpler.  Waldo, perfectly described them in his blog.

Customers need real marketplace, with thousands of apps. And this is our (as partners) “must do” priority task to achieve this goal.

Monetization API for Apps

I think one of the reasons, why we don’t see apps in AppSource, because we don’t have monetization API. Nowadays we can create Free apps or create monetization logic ourselves.

But we’ve never done this before! We don’t know how to organize it, develop it, and support it. I think this would be great initiative if Microsoft will add this opportunity, take all supporting stuff like billing, money collection at themselves.

Btw, they already have monetization api in Microsoft Store, so why not to add it to AppSource?

At Directions ASIA, Freddy showed some example, how we can add monetization logic in our apps, using Stripe api.  This could be the first step, that we all need. Waiting for sharing this on his github.

Smart Apps

I noticed that previous 2 topics were about apps, and this one too. May be that’s because of my passion not to change something, but to extend it.

In the world of saasification we need smart apps. They should use Machine Learning, Cognitive Services, Bots, AI – all these amazing technologies.

Just with only one reason – save time to end user (read “make him more productive”, “empower him to do more”, etc.). I think that in nearest future, apps without AI behavior will die. 

Start learn it, and use it.

One click Upgrade

This is what I dream about J

If we use standard system, extended only with Apps or Extensions (which is the same btw), so why not to have one click upgrade?

At Directions ASIA Microsoft showed us, that they upgrade D365BC tenants for about 30 seconds. And this is amazing!

So why not to bring this feature to OnPrem customers with the same conditions?

Hey, this is normal to have “Do you want to upgrade?” question inside of your software in UI.

Localization as extension

In global projects this should be “must have” feature.

With the support of Unicode, and all languages in NAV2018 this should be step forward.

Just one database, new company, activate localization extension and that’s all. This how I see it.

Microsoft has already started implement it from Danish localization. Erik perfectly described this in his blog.

The one question I think about, is should localization be packaged in one extension or several?

As you know localization is not only “mandatory local functionality”, like taxes, reports and bank integrations. This is also a functionality that more often used in this country, than in another. But this rarely used functionality, can be very interesting for users from other countries also.

For example, in Russian localization we have G/L Turnovers. Intuitive, simple and productive overview of your G/L Accounts. Available only in Russian localization. When we made international projects and showed this feature to users from Europe or USA, they told “Wow, we want this!”. 

In the last my project, I decided to make an extension from it, and described the process in my blog.

The source code, and extension itself can be found on my github https://github.com/dkatson/GL-Turnovers-pack-for-NAV .

Such small, but useful functionalities can be packed as separate extensions. And when you activate main “localization extension” system can suggest you also to download and install these related extensions as well.

Let customer decide what app he needs

At DirectionsASIA, Microsoft told us that customers will not have opportunity to install app on production tenant by themselves. Only a partner, who is responsible for a client can do that.

On the one hand this correct. Partner have more experience on what each app can do, and what cannot. Partner can suggest apps that potentially will not conflict with each other.

What I’m afraid of, is conflict of interest. Will customers partner suggest app of another’s partner, if he has app with the same functionality? Even if another application is more suited to the client?

If yes – this is fair play.

If not – well, karma returns.

Conclusion

Once again, all in this blogpost is my opinion. Nobody paid we for any provided links.

I’m just thrilled with D365 Business Central, which will be publically available in a few days.

And I want brilliant future for it.

Only together, not just only Microsoft, we can make Dynamics 365 Business Central Great Again!