Dynamics Community Forum Thread Details

Looking for advice/insight for upgrade NAV 2013r2 to 2018

Hello,

I am an end-user responsible for overseeing the upgrade of our NAV 2013r2 to NAV 2018, and possibly onward to Dynamics 365.

From what I gather the best approach is to upgrade to 2018, rather than 2015 or 2016, because 2018 can be directly upgraded to Dynamics 365 if we choose to go down that road.

We're looking at possibly changing NAV solution providers, so the new developer would not be familiar with our environment. So to give you an idea of our customizes, as I understand that to be what makes the upgrades more costly and time consuming, we have:

30 custom reports
80 custom pages
50 custom tables
15 custom codeunits
1 custom Query
2 custom XML Ports
1 custom MenuSuite

I would say it's a relatively small amount of customization for a NAV environment.

I know some of these are loaded question but here goes...

What kind of estimated timeline should we expect to complete an upgrade to 2018? Like days, weeks, etc...?
Should we expect any downtime during the upgrade? Were' a 8-5, M-F operation.
How much of the upgrade is generally automated. Like 50%, 60%, 70%, etc...?
Apart from developer's time, what other expenses should we anticipate? i.e. licensing (we're not on a Software Assurance agreement)
What kind of overall costs should we anticipate? Like 5K, 10K, 15K, etc...?

Any other insights from other end-users involved in upgrading are appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

Hi,

I hope I will be able to answer most of the questions and also provide some suggestions -

Question - Why NAV 2018 and not Business Central 14?

Do you have an updated License for NAV 2018 as its not an option from Microsoft to upgrade to NAV 2018?
Cost / Effort / Time to upgrade either to NAV 2018 or BC14 will be the Same.

To answer your first question - From NAV 2013R2 you can directly upgrade to NAV 2018 (CU2 Max).

To clarify your second concern -

For an upgrade, the Developer does not need an understanding of Customizations / Mods in your database. It a completely different process than Implementation or Support.

Question - Object Count Listed above are Custom objects (50000..99999) or Microsoft Base Modified Objects?

Your Questions -

Question - What kind of estimated timeline should we expect to complete an upgrade to 2018? Like days, weeks, etc...?

Answer - Your Partner will be in a better position to do that. If you want a free quote from us, please use link https://pages.archerpoint.com/DN-2018UpgradeQuoteRequest_LP-Registration

Why I am suggesting Upgrade to Business Central & more about Upgrading www.archerpoint.com/services-upgrade-nav

Question - Should we expect any downtime during the upgrade? Were' a 8-5, M-F operation.

Answer - We don't have any downtime during upgrades that we do. I cannot say this for other partners. We do upgrades during weekends.

Question - How much of the upgrade is generally automated. Like 50%, 60%, 70%, etc...?

Answer - It Depends on the Number of Mods and how they are written. Another factor in the automated part is No. of ISV Solutions you use.

Question - Apart from the developer's time, what other expenses should we anticipate? i.e. licensing (we're not on a Software Assurance agreement)

Answer - Product License, Server, Software Licenses & Major one is User Time for Testing.

Question - What kind of overall costs should we anticipate? Like 5K, 10K, 15K, etc...?

Answer - Please reach out to our team to get better and clear answers about all the questions above.

Let me know if you have any additional questions.

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