In 1997, the company I worked for was looking to replace their MS-DOS-based software package. We were very fortunate in finding Navision Financials 1.1 as a software package that supported the upcoming Windows platform and was flexible enough to be implemented, supporting our demands.

Even though the standard functionality was nowhere near what we have today, the structure of the application design was simple and solid and has not changed since then.

In the years after that, more companies embraced Navision as their answer to the changing demands in the market, and many vertical solutions that still exist today started their life cycle. With the acquisition of Navision by Microsoft, the interest of new partners grew into the channel we know today.

Microsoft Dynamics NAV offers a unique development experience that can only be fully used once you understand how the standard application parts are designed.

When properly licensed, everyone can change how the application works. With this great possibility comes great responsibility as this means that we can also easily break important business logic.

This results in a unique need for a designer of applications that run inside Microsoft Dynamics NAV to know more about the application without going into deep functional details.

The balance in this book will be between learning and understanding how the standard application features of Microsoft Dynamics NAV are designed, and how to use this knowledge when designing our own solutions. The area between understanding the application functionality and technical design is very thin.

In this book, we will make both changes to the standard application and create new solutions. We will also discuss how Microsoft Dynamics NAV can work with other applications.