                                                                                                        - Ferdinand de Saussure
                                                      - Ron Jeffries
Microsoft Dynamics NAV has one of the largest installed user bases of any enterprise resource planning (ERP) system serving over 100,000 companies and one million plus individual users at the time of this writing. The community of supporting organizations, consultants, implementers, and developers continues to grow and prosper. The capabilities of the off-the-shelf product increase with every release. The selection of the add-on products and services expands both in variety and depth.
The release of Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2017 continues its 20+ year history of continuous product improvement. It provides more user options for access and output formatting. For new installations, NAV 2017 includes tools for rapid implementation. For all installations, it provides enhanced business functionality and more support for ERP computing in the cloud, including integration with Microsoft Office 365.
NAV 2017 is also the base foundation for Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Financials, which is a cloud-based subset of the product that you can customize using extensions. We will discuss the concept of extensions in this book.
Our goal in this chapter is to gain a big picture understanding of NAV 2017. You will be able to envision how NAV can be used by the managers (or owners) of an organization to help manage activities and the resources, whether the organization is for-profit or not-for-profit. You will also be introduced to the technical side of NAV from a developer's point of view.
In this chapter, we will take a look at NAV 2017, including the following:
- A general overview of NAV 2017
- A technical overview of NAV 2017
- A hands-on introduction to C/SIDE development in NAV 2017
