The first two weeks of the training have passed in the meantime. After a first introductory week the students were divided into two tracks in the second week: a functional track and a functional track. Focus now is on preparation for the third week. Luc is trainer for the technical track, Coen and Rob for the functional track.
week 1
The first week, from October 29 to November 2, introduced the students to the Dynamics 365 Business Central application and the main purpose of an ERP-system. They gained knowledge about Dynamics 365 Business Central by doing a lot of exercises. These exercises had a strong focus on the general basic business processes managed by Dynamics 365 Business Central. We started with some basic financial postings through a journal and meanwhile making the postings more and more complicated. Later that week we moved to the more trade related general processes. Students created their own master data to follow their own processes step by step. Master data became more extended and the modules settings and navigate function helped students finding the reason of all outcome of the processes. Based on these outcome different reports could show most of the time correct figures. Analyses by dimensions were setup by the students to understand the base of the figures of their own executed processes.
We could finish this first week with a lot of positive feedback from students by paying attention to different didactic methods. We paid attention to small individual research regarding functional area’s and presentations afterwards. We challenged each other by quizzes every day as a kind of recap of gained knowledge. Exhausted with a good feeling we left Rolduc Abbey on Friday.
week 2
On November 12 we gathered again for the second week. The first week to split up for the functional and technical track.
The functional track paid attention to Marketing (CRM), P&P and S&R. The week started with a clear focus on CRM in general. What is CRM and what kind of functionality for CRM is covered by Dynamics 365 Business Central? At the end of this subject students finished by creating and presenting a data model for the module Marketing in Dynamics NAV. P&P and S&R covered extended processes based on week 1. With the same master data more complicated processes were processed and posted and new reports had to be run and shown. We finished the week by presentations in flow charts related to the business processes per role/department.
In the technical track we dived straight into the traditional development environment, C/SIDE. Based on Monday’s introduction to tables and pages the students started building the foundation of a first, small development case for this course: Course Registration. The following two days were focused on C/AL coding, where the students implemented business rules in the Course Registration application using code. It was quite challenging for all of them as the introduction was kept to a minimum to challenge the students as much as possible. It was impressive to see how challenged they all were.
Late Wednesday afternoon VSCode / AL development was introduced and based on this the students had to rebuild the small Course Registration application as an extension.
Friday morning installation and configuration matters relevant to any Dynamics 365 Business Central developer were discussed and practiced. The second week was finished with the somewhat softer side of being a developer and with homework assignment based on this last topic the students left for home and a well-deserved weekend.
what’s next
In the upcoming 3rd week, starting on December 10, the functional track will pay attention to HRM, Resources and Warehouse Management. During all these weeks we alternate day by day our didactic methods and approaches to prepare and challenge students in their new job as consultant.
Where the technical track will pose a first great challenge getting the students building a standard application. Each day they will have to deliver their code in Azure DevOps and will get it reviewed before the next day.
