SAP Business One 8.8 - New Features and First Impressions
SAP Business One 8.8 Preview
We finally got the system up and running on a new virtual PC. Here are some first thoughts:
The new theme looks awesome. It's great how the colors and gradients give SAP Business One an updated look. I've long thought that the SAP Business One interface, while functional, was a bit dated. This new design really takes the application design to another level. Also, it's very comprehensive. Those graph bars on the sales analysis? Yea, they're pretty now too. The colors have also been renamed to more aptly describe the color you're actually selecting, and, if by some chance you really hate the new UI look, you can easily jump back to the classic version with a few clicks and a restart of the application. I really hope that they allow for custom theming in the new engine or in a subsequent future release.
SAP Business One 8.8 - System Message Log
A really nice new feature is the "system message log". One of the frustrating parts of SAP Business One was the system messages that would seemingly appear and disappear at random (ok, it wasn't random, but try moving your mouse to open notepad and record the message and watch your red bar vanish). Now, there is a nice tabular system error log at the bottom of the screen that fits rather elegantly into the application design. You can review all of your messages, warnings, or errors all in a nice little list. Again, if this can be edited to include multiple tabs or other information via the API this could be really really powerful.
SAP Business One 8.8 - Printing Enhancements
The printing enhancements and the full Crystal Reports integration is probably the change that will most significantly alter the user experience. You can now export, import, and assign multiple prints/printers to almost every report in the system (meaning I haven't found one you can't yet). This is really cool; instead of having to make exactly the same changes to a layout on eight or so different document prints, it appears that you can export and import a generic change set between documents. None of the default reports have been updated to include the new Crystal layouts yet, but I hear that's coming with the full release.
SAP Business One 8.8 - Archiving Functionality
Archiving is something partners and clients have been demanding as more clients move past the three and four year mark on SAP. I watched SAP's webcast on how the data archiving utility works, but I haven't had a chance to put our demo system through the paces yet. It's somewhat cumbersome as SAP hasn't changed all of the period information in the new database. I'll have to add some old document "clusters" so the archiving tool process can be run though. We'll probably make a video of this to show you guys.
I'm all about the little things, and there are some pretty nice small enhancements. First, you can now rearrange the entire menu via a control placed in the administration section of the menu. It gives a lot more flexibility than the "My Menu" system in previous versions. You can also now add HTML email signatures (both business and personal) to any email sent via SAP Business One.
SAP Business One 8.8 - Address Improvements
Finally, my personal favorite new feature. When you change a ship-to or bill-to address on a marketing document, you're prompted with a window that manages that data input. From what I'm able to tell, these fields are tied to columns in the database tables, so you should be able to have parsed address information for all those overrides on the marketing documents. Anyone that has ever tried to use these fields knows what a royal pain it is to write address parsing code to manage the address fields in code, prints, and reports.
SAP Business One 8.8 - Upgrade Summary
Overall, the changes are impressive, but mostly cosmetic in nature. Very little of the underlying application functionality has changed, and, if you turn off the new UI, you'd barely notice a difference. That's not to say there isn't a lot to be gained from 8.8, just that it's not a sweeping shift like the 2005 to 2007 jump was. We've still got a lot of evaluation and testing to do, so we'll let you know more about performance enhancements (I hear pick-and-pack is supposed to be better), Crystal Reports integration, data archiving, and other enhancements work. For now, I'll leave you with a teaser screenshot of the new UI:
SAP Business One 8.8 Screenshot: A screenshot of the new sales order and delivery screens, with the bottom info bar.
