IT changes

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 Server administration

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.

Windows PowerShell cmdlets

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:

The following are the cmdlets to upgrade data as described under the Upgrade automation – an overview section of this chapter:

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:

The following are the cmdlets for the Office 365 Administration setup with Dynamics NAV:

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: