The ability to upgrade a customized system is a very important feature of NAV. Most other complex business application systems are very difficult to customize at the database-structure and process-flow levels. NAV readily offers this capability. This is a significant difference between NAV and the competitive products in the market.

Complementing the ability to be customized is the ability to upgrade a customized NAV system. While not a trivial task, at least it is possible with NAV. In many other systems, the only reasonable path to an upgrade is often to discard the old version and reimplement with the new version, recreating all customizations. Not only is NAV unusually accommodating to being upgraded, but with each new version of the system, Microsoft has enhanced the power and flexibility of the tools it provides to help us do upgrades. In the Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2017 Development Shell, among other useful cmdlets, there is the Merge-NAVApplicationObject cmdlet. Refer to the Developer and IT Pro Help section: Microsoft Dynamics NAV Windows PowerShell Cmdlets for details on starting and using a Development Shell session (hint: use the Search box to find information on the Development Shell).

We may say, why should a developer care about upgrades? There are at least two good reasons we should care about upgrades. First, because our design and coding of our modifications can have a considerable impact on the amount of effort required to upgrade a system. Second, because as skilled developers doing NAV customizations, we might well be asked to be involved in an upgrade project. Because the ability to upgrade is important, and because we are likely to be involved one way or another, we will review a number of factors that relate to upgrades.