Yule (B)log 2 - Santa Plans Christmas on NAV - Thanks to Clarita.
Ross Soady from Clarita shows how the RTC and Web Services can really help get the job done. Excellent stuff Ross!
How Microsoft Helped Santa Plan Christmas! – (a completely non-allegorical tale)
Santa, as you know, is a busy man. So when he approached Microsoft for some help with his not-for-profit business, they pointed him towards Dynamics NAV 2009!
There’s a lot to do to prepare for Christmas. So Santa and Mrs Claus decided to set up a Job in Dynamics NAV 2009 to help them plan their activities.
As you can see, the planning begins at the start of November, and goes right through until almost the end of December. Santa realised he needed to be a bit more organised, so he split his plan down into more manageable tasks using the Job Task Lines in Dynamics NAV 2009.
Still, Santa needed a bit more detail, as there were many people working on all these important tasks, so Santa decided to break the tasks down into even more detail with the Job Planning List in Dynamics NAV 2009. This allowed Santa to plan who was doing what, and when.
That’s better. What would be great, Santa thought as he munched on some milk and cookies, would be to look at the information in a graphical format. Why not add a chart onto the page! In Dynamics NAV 2009, even Santa, an avowed luddite, found this easy.
Santa may have spoken too soon, as the graph above clearly shows that most of the workload is with him. Hmmm Santa thought, might be time for Rudolph to get a bit more involved in the project.
The next challenge for Santa was to keep track of all the tasks. He needed a simple way of letting people notify him that they had completed their job. Santa decided to get Bill, one of his elves, to put together a Microsoft InfoPath form that would allow all the elves, reindeer and Mrs Claus to check off their jobs. This would tell Santa if he was going to get everything done in time, and getting presents to boys and girls is very important. The InfoPath form was put onto everyone’s computer. As soon as they had completed a task, all they had to do was tick the box which let Santa know via an email alert that the job was complete.
Finally, on the day before he had to leave, Santa wanted to ensure his accountant was happy with everything (a business is a business. Even in the North Pole!). So he checked whether the WIP value was to be calculated on Cost Value, Sales Value, Cost of Sales, Percentage of Completion or the Completed Contract. Santa’s head started to hurt and he decided that accounting was not his forte and chose to ask his Dynamics NAV partner to explain it all to him in a couple of easy sentences. Which they did.
Even Santa needs a little help from time to time.
Season’s Greetings from the team at Clarita Solutions!
