Power to Navision

I know, officially it’s Dynamics NAV, but honestly, is there anyone in the real world that doesn’t still call it Navision? Anyway, this post is not about naming, it’s about Power.

Yes, these days the new buzzword seems to be power. PowerView, PowerShell and PowerPivot to be more precise. [Ah, and PowerPoint, but that’s not a ‘new’ one :)]

If this keeps on, might  there one day even be PowerDynamics of PowerVision? Who knows…

Enough funny stuff, let’s get serious. Power is the name of the game and Power it really is. I believe PowerShell, PowerPivot and PowerView can really become an added value on top of Dynamics NAV (or any other ERP system)

Because Knowledge is Power I’m going to dive a little deeper into these three technologies.

Ofcourse, I can’t go into detail in just 1 blog post. My idea is to start with this post and then go from here. I’m not an expert yet in any of the three subjects, I’m just an interested enthousiast who has seen a couple of demo’s has read a couple of whitepapers and started ‘playing around’ with the tools.

My plan is to start to learn more about PowerPivot, PowerView and PowerShell and report my findings here.

I will try to do this in a ‘Navision’ context. Which means that I will try to evaluate how to integrate the Power with NAV. And since Dynamics NAV runs on SQL Server, that should not be difficult.

Let’s start with some information resources.

PowerShell:

• http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb978526.aspx
• http://blogs.msdn.com/b/powershell/

PowerPivot:

• http://www.powerpivot.com/
• http://blogs.msdn.com/powerpivot/
• http://www.powerpivotpro.com/

PowerView:

• http://blogs.msdn.com/b/sqlrsteamblog/
• http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/edge/Video/hh872894
• http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh213579(v=sql.110).aspx

A question you might have is, what does PowerShell has to do with PowerPivot and PowerView?

Although a good question, in this case, that’s not relevant, because my idea is to investigate the possible integrations (and added value) with Dynamics NAV.

If you absolutely have no idea what PowerShell, PowerPivot and PowerView are about, let me quickly and briefly introduce them.

PowerShell is actually a ‘new’ commandline and scripting environment in Windows. You can use it to manage Windows Server, SQL Server, … and in the future also Dynamics NAV.

PowerPivot is a data mashup and data exploration tool, built on top of Excel using Analysis services technology behind the scenes which can be very easily integrated in SharePoint.

PowerView is an interactive data exploration, visualization, and presentation experience. It runs in SharePoint and can use PowerPivot as it’s data model and also SQL Server 2012 tabular models (SQM Server Analysis Services)

I my opinion, PowerPivot and PowerView can become important players in the Cloud when it comes down to Business Intelligence and self service BI. And when you think about where Dynamics NAV 2013 is heading regarding ‘the cloud’, it might be something to keep an eye on.

So, lets get started soon and see how to bring the Power to Navision !