Several changes regarding IT have been introduced with the release of Dynamics NAV, including the following:
- Easier installation and deployment
- Easier administration
- New clients
- New services
Dynamics NAV 2016 includes a new server administration tool for administering Dynamics NAV Server.
It is a snap-in for the Microsoft Management Console. When installing the server option, the server administration tool is a default feature.
Once the server option is installed, you will find it on your Windows Start menu with all the other Dynamics NAV components installed on the same machine.
From the server administration tool, we will have a clear picture of all the Dynamics NAV instances running on the machine, their version, status, and configuration (name, the database to which the instance connects, ports for the different types of services, and so on).
From the server administration tool, we can add or remove instances (we can even add instances running on a different server), edit their settings, start or stop the services, and so on.
Dynamics NAV 2016 comes with a set of PowerShell cmdlets that allow us to perform administrative tasks on our Dynamics NAV installation.
You will also find it on your Windows Start menu with all the other Dynamics NAV components installed on the same machine.
When you run the cmdlets, a list of all the available cmdlet command types for Dynamics NAV will be displayed.
NAV 2016 introduced some new cmdlets. These cmdlets and their descriptions are taken from the Microsoft MSDN website.
The following are the cmdlets for merging Application Objects for an upgrade as described under the Upgrade automation – an overview section in this chapter:
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Cmdlets |
Description |
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Compares text files with Microsoft Dynamics NAV application objects and then calculates the delta between the two versions. The result of the comparison is a number of text files with the calculated delta. |
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Gets Microsoft Dynamics NAV application object properties from the specified application object text files. |
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Combines multiple application object files into one text file. |
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Compares the changes that have been made to the application objects between two versions of Microsoft Dynamics NAV, and applies the difference to a third set of application objects. The result of the merge is a number of text files with the merged application objects. Any conflicts that the cmdlet cannot merge are identified in conflict files. |
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Sets Microsoft Dynamics NAV application object properties in the specified application object text files. |
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Splits a text file that contains two or more application objects into separate text files for each application object. |
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Applies a set of deltas to specified application objects. The files that describe the delta are generated by the |
The following are the cmdlets to upgrade data as described under the Upgrade automation – an overview section of this chapter:
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Cmdlets |
Description |
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Starts the data upgrade process for upgrading data in the business (tenant) database. |
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Resumes a data upgrade process that has been suspended because of an error. |
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Stops a data upgrade process. |
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Gets information about the data upgrade process that is currently running or the last completed data upgrade process. |
The following are the cmdlets to update captions in Application Object Files. These are very useful when you are trying to put in (or take out) additional languages for your Dynamics NAV software:
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Cmdlets |
Description |
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Exports captions from specified text files with Microsoft Dynamics NAV application objects. The captions are exported to text files. |
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Imports strings in a specified language into text files that contain Microsoft Dynamics NAV application objects. |
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Combines multiple text files with captions for Microsoft Dynamics NAV application objects into one text file. |
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Deletes captions in a specified language from Microsoft Dynamics NAV application objects. |
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Splits a text file that contains multilanguage captions for two or more application objects into separate text files for each application object. |
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This cmdlet tests captions in Microsoft Dynamics NAV application objects to test and validate that the strings have been translated for the specified languages. |
The following are the cmdlets for the Office 365 Administration setup with Dynamics NAV:
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Cmdlets |
Description |
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Performs configuration changes to support a single sign-on with Office 365 for a Microsoft Dynamics NAV Windows client and a Microsoft Dynamics NAV Web client. |
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Facilitates the creating of self-signed certificates that are used to protect communication between a NAV service and a Microsoft Dynamics NAV Web client. |
Prior to NAV 2013 R2, you were allowed to backup data from a specific company, then restore that data in a completely separate database in a completely separate environment. In NAV 2013 R2, with the introduction of mutli-tenant, backups by company were no longer available.
This made it extremely hard for NAV partners or customers to move data from a specific company to another environment. You had to take the entire SQL database and replace the database in your development environment. Testing based on scenario data became almost impossible. This is especially frustrating when you only want to replace the data, and not the application objects.
A lot of developers were relieved when these cmdlets were introduced in place of the company backups. The following are the cmdlets for importing and exporting NAV data:
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Cmdlets |
Description |
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Exports data from a Microsoft Dynamics NAV database. You can export company-specific data, and you can choose to include global data, application data, or application objects. |
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Imports data into a Microsoft Dynamics NAV database from a file. You can import the entire data in the file, or you can choose to include specific companies, global data, application data, or application objects. Note that you can only import an application into an empty database. |
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Gets information from a file that has been exported from a Microsoft Dynamics NAV database. The extracted information includes the types of data that the file contains and company names. |