The Development team at eOne have been heads down for the past 6 months, working hard to help Microsoft complete the functionality that will be delivered in Dynamics GP V11. Over the next few weeks I will talk about some of these functions and features in the upgrade and what they mean for you.

The first big announcement (first discussed at the tech conference in Nov in Fargo) is that Navigation List Builder (NLB) from eOne is going to be available from Microsoft in conjunction with V11. You can learn more about NLB here . In short NLB provides a way for all GP customers to build their own navigation lists, based on any data sourced from within or outside of GP. Watch the demo video now
If you love SmartList Builder then you are going to love Navigation List Builder. Now I hear some of you saying ‘but our clients do not use Navigation Lists’ which is a very valid point. There are many factors read about them here as to why this is but the biggest reason has been that ‘navigation lists are too slow’.

This is where NLB comes to the rescue. The issue behind the speed of Navigation Lists is that it is designed to return all records in a list, before applying any filters. e.g. If you return a list of customers (with a filter where ClassID=’Corporate’ and there are 10,000 total customers but only 500 corporate customers then all 10,000 records are returned before being filtered down to the 500 required). What NLB lets you do is build a custom list that only ever returns 500 records. By restricting the data at the source, customers will find navigation Lists run very much faster. (In truth the Navigation List does not run faster, but just on a restricted and user specific data set).

Microsoft designed navigation lists as a key part of the role based user experience with V10, and the ability to trigger actions to go with these roles. This is a really important part of GP and helps to set GP apart from the pretenders. Sadly the adoption rate has been very slow and I hope the adoption rate takes off with V11 as the functionality is much more usable.

The functionality of NLB is very similar to that of SLB so there will be a very small learning curve for consultants and end users. You Can now get any data form anywhere into the list of your choice.

NLB will be packaged up inside of SmartList Builder with the release of V11. So when you upgrade to V11 GP, and you already own SmartList Builder you will receive NLB for FREE. How good is that? If you have not yet jumped on board with SmartList Builder (I don’t believe there can be too many of you out there) now is the time. There is going to be a price jump in SmartList Builder in conjunction with V11’s release, so if you are considering SLB or have some dollars left in the IT budget then jump on board now before the price goes up.

The current price is $1,550 and it will be $1,950 once V11 hits the shelves. You do not have long to act.

The next V11 blog will discuss Drill Down Builder … and if you thought NLB is good then wait for this one.