Anveo Web Portal / Important Information

Important Information

Please read this documentation carefully before you begin an Anveo Mobile App or Anveo Web Portal project. It contains very valuable information to ensure a successful implementation.

Two Solutions In One Product

The Anveo Mobile App is fully offline capable. You can create your own business processes as Anveo scripts that run on the mobile device and modify data before it is synchronized back to Microsoft Dynamics. That makes developing an own client – which uses the Anveo Client Suite – more easy.

With the Anveo Web Portal, all data is retrieved and written back through Microsoft Dynamics business logic, so that no redundant source code for a web-based application is required. Thus the web-based clients serve only for preparation and display of data from Microsoft Dynamics.

Software Components

The solutions described in this documentation consist of various software components, which together achieve the defined scope of services.The components may be available from different vendors, e.g. Microsoft Dynamics 365 is only available from a Microsoft Dynamics partner, while the Anveo Mobile App is available for download from the Apple App Store, Google Play or Microsoft Store. All components and the details on pricing and how to obtain the software are described in the system requirements.

Flexible Tool-kit For Your Individual Solutions

The Anveo Client Suite is a very flexible tool to create individual mobile apps and web portals for Microsoft Dynamics. It has been specifically designed for partners and customers, to significantly reduce development time, meet a wide range of requirements and react quickly.

Example Applications For A Quick And Easy Start

The Anveo Client Suite provides templates for various scenarios such as sales and service. These templates include for example some Anveo Pages, that define the layout of data from Microsoft Dynamics. With Anveo Pages you can display and edit data using your Anveo Mobile App or the Anveo Web Portal. With this framework you can create Anveo Pages with just a few mouse clicks and none to little development effort.

System Requirements

Please carefully read the system requirements of the infrastructure and third party licenses.

Important Notice About Expectations

Before you begin an Anveo project, we want to make sure the users and the repsonsible Microsoft Dynamics Partner is aware of the product value and the feature set, the open tasks and the responsibilities.

The existing applications like the Anveo Sales App, Anveo Service App, other apps or the Web Portal solutions are templates for a good starting point. We call them “Base Apps” and they are examples for a faster developoment. But note: They are not a copy of Microsoft Dynamics including all features, they are not ready-to-use solutions. You cannot just install Anveo and all business processes will run in Anveo as they do in Microsoft Dynamics today. A detailled planning, configuration and testing of the Anveo product is required first.

Why is this? Microsoft Dynamics also is a very flexible ERP system with a lot of different versions, localizations and customizations. Although one of the biggest benefits of Anveo is the deep integration into these systems, Anveo also has a very high dependency on the proper set up of data structures and business processes.

The end user and the repsonsible Microsoft Dynamics Partner has a clear understanding of all business processes. As a result, the responsibility for the installation, infrastructure, setup of appearance, behavior (processes) and proper synchronization and first level support lies by the Microsoft Dynamics Partner or end user, not by Anveo.

As a result, it is absolutely required that the end user and the Microsoft Dynamics Partner seriously understand and acceppt this responsibilty. A detailed planning of business processes, a good project management and a well-organized testing period are inevitable to achieve a successful project.

Of course, Anveo is here to help and support in all parts of the project. With hundreds of successful projects, we are happy to share our knowledge on training, best practices and go-live. Please have a look at our Best Practices Guide and please get in touch with our team to set up a project plan.

Only if explicitly desired and instructed, parts of the installation or confiuration can be handed over to Anveo or to other Microsoft Dynamics partners as service.

Implementation done by the Anveo Team

If you explicitly hand-over the development of a mobile app or web portal solution to Anveo, we are happy to give you the best experience and knowledge out of hundreds of successful projects. To make your project a success, it is important to talk about tasks and their responsibilities in such a project set-up.

End User

The company that is willing to use Anveo has the best knowledge of their business processes and is able to express their objectives. We offer a kick-off meeting that is included in our “Anveo Quick Start Package” that puts all parties to one table: The end users, the decision makers, the Microsoft Dynamics Partner and Anveo.

In this meeting, we talk about expectations, time lines and tasks. As a result, we will set up a project plan together. This also includes a rough estimate of the total amout of time required to configure the application. However, we run our projects agile so we can easily benefit from spontaneous goal-changes during the implementation. As a result, our planned budget in the beginning is not a binding price for a fixed feature set. We have seen that this modern approach is much faster and cheaper for all parties.

Microsoft Dynamics Partner

The Microsoft Dynamics Partner is having full control of the Microsoft Dynamics system in terms of implementing business processes. Sometimes, the partner is also offering infrastructural services.
If the desired application requires any changes on the Microsoft Dynamics objects and their business processes, Anveo will hand-over the required changes to the responsible developer at the partner. This results in a clear responsibily during the impementation and also after the go-live.
The Microsoft Dynamics Partner is also responsible for proper licensing of Microsoft Dynamics.

Anveo

Our project team is taking care of the mobile app or web portal configuration in terms of Anveo Pages, Synchronization Packages… Anveo then step-by-step implements the changes that have been identified during the first kick-off meeting and all additional product presentations and test-runs by the end-users. Anveo’s task is to provide best practices and set up the application based on the end-users or partners requests, but Anveo cannot decide about business processes or test the application in terms of process stability or completeness.

Test Run before Buying / Software is “As-Is”

Please make sure that you intensively test the requested business case with your system before buying the product or before buying devices for all users. Due to the flexibility of the product, you may configure the application in a way that does not behave as expected. This could be caused by too many user interface actions, too slow devices or a large amount of data. Unfortunately, we cannot give you a guarantee that your desired behavior is 100% met with our tool-kit. Only a well-designed test run will give you the safety that your expectations are met.

Anveo’s core benefit is the deep integration into Microsoft Dynamics and a very similar configuration. This results in a very fast configuration of a solution as we use well-known configuration concepts. However, Anveo is alike Microsoft Dynamics, but it is not Microsoft Dynamics. We are using small, mobile devices or browsers, this is why you cannot expect that all features from Microsoft Dynamics are behaving the same way in Anveo.

We offer free test licenses that allows you to run the product on your infrastructure, with your business case and with your test devices. Please get in touch with our team to get your license.

Importance of Test Runs before Go-Live

Before you go live with your solution, make sure, that the end-users have intensively tested the application for a longer period. This should be done with a smaller group of 3 to 5 key users and at least for a week. It is not possible to run a valid test of a mobile application in the office. Why is this? A valid test requires a real scenario that consists of real data, a real environment, real devices and at least a larger set of differentent process variations.

Please be aware that a support case of users in the field is much more difficult to support than on a just server-based system like Microsoft Dynamics. Every case that a good test will identify before a go-live will save you a lot of time. This will also keep the user acceptance on a good level.

It is very important not to skip the testing process and not to go-live with all users at the same time. If you skip a proper testing period, you will risk data inconsistencies and the user acceptance of the product.

Importance of Proper Maintenance

The Anveo solutions will significantly streamline your business processes as paperless processes will save a lot of time. To make sure you will get most out of the Anveo solution, it is important to fully understand the maintenance tasks of the product. This will keep the performance and the user acceptenace on a high level.

Let us mention some examples:

  • A Microsoft Dynamics user in the back office should have a look at incoming data that cannot be processed automatically due to data conflicts. Anveo provies a Role Center view to easily identify tasks.
  • You should delete unused devices from the devices list in Microsoft Dynamics to keep the data history on a low leve.
  • Historical delta table information, sending and receving tasks should be automatically deleted.
  • Your database server might require a set up of a weekly “index rebuild maintenance plan”.

If you do not take care on these maintenance tasks, you will risk a “dead-lock” situation that will result in a full-stop of your Anveo and your Microsoft Dynamics system for some hours or even up to several days.

To help you for a proper set up, Anveo offers “Admin Trainings” and a “Performance Analysis” as paid services.

Stay Up-To-Date

Please make sure that you keep your Anveo components up-to-date.

Anveo Mobile App

If you are not using a mobile device management software, the Anveo Mobile App will be updated automatically via “Apple App Store”, “Google Play” or “Microsoft Store”. We highly recommend to turn automatic updates off for all devices to test the new version on a separate device first. Alternatively, you may get access to our preview program to get a access to new version before we will pubish them on the stores.
In terms of stability, we highly recommend to use a mobile device managment software. This results in full control of the app version that is installed on the devices and you can control the time for an update.

Server Components

The server components will not update automatically, but we also highly recommend to keep them up-to-date as well as they might include important performance and security updates. Of course we offer configuration support for all Anveo versions. But please understand that in case you have issues with your installation, we can only offer support and hot-fixes for the newest versions.

Infrastucture Changes

Before making any changes on your infrastructure like upgrading your Microsoft Dynamics or servers, please make sure that Anveo supports your new system. We highly recommend to get in touch with our support team in your planning period.

System Requirements

Please have a look at our system requirements (infrastucture requirements) like software, hardware and licenses here.

How to get Support

Here you can get in touch with our support team. Please find more information about free and chargable services here.

Anveo Client Suite Best Practices Guide

Beside this technical documentaton, Anveo provides a free guide including valuable informaton on how to run successful Anveo implementatons. It is absolutely required to read the guide before an implementaton to achieve successful projects. The guide is available for download at the Anveo Knowledge Base in the following chapter.