MobileNAV | How It Works. The Architecture of MobileNAV.

Architecture

The most of the mobile applications for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central or NAV works the same way. As our solution provides you with many stunning features thanks to leading edge technologies applied, our application was developed a little differently. No, we haven’t found anything special, just apply the latest innovations. See how we did it.

Network Topology

In a typical infrastructure, there is a protected company domain which contains the company computers. The domain is protected with a firewall or proxy. The mobile devices are usually outside of this domain network, but it can also be inside, for example in a warehouse installation. This is just one IT topology what we supporting, but MobileNAV can be installed in many kind of other topologies like hosted or cloud environments, but this is the most common one what we are facing.

MS Dynamics NAV Server

On the server side you normally have a Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009 R2, 2013, 2013 R2, 2015, 2016, 2017 or 2018 Server. These versions come with a new component, which is the Business Web Service, which provides web service access to the published pages and codeunits of the NAV system.

MobileNAV Client

What we have built on top of this is that we have created a MobileNAV Client Application which should be installed on all the mobile devices. MobileNAV Client Application is a real app. We have created separate applications for each supported mobile platforms.

MobileNAV Configuration

The configuration stored centrally inside the NAV database. This MobileNAV Configuration is basically containing metadata information about the published pages and codeunits for the MobileNAV client. The idea is that this configuration will describe all the MobileNAV related configurations or customizations and on the first login of the client he will download the configuration from the server and once the configuration has been downloaded to the client side, than he will build up the user interface regarding to this configuration. So in that case you can easily customize the solution and you can roll out all customization to the client’s devices.

MobileNAV Add-On

To ease the customization and configuration we have created an add-on, which is the MobileNAV Add-on component, and that will give you user interface and all the technical background to make this happen.

Communication Flow

The MobileNAV client is communicating with the MobileNAV Add-on first, to download the MobileNAV configuration. Once it the client downloaded the configuration, the client can consume and exchange data directly with the page web services of the NAV. MobileNAV client uses HTTP as a protocol, so the firewalls and proxies will supports this kind of communication. The authentication is NTLM, so you have to have Windows logins for your mobile users. MobileNAV also supports NAVUserPassword users from NAV version 2013 or above. You can protect the communication channel with SSL encryption. This is recommended for production environments.

Supported NAV & BC versions

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central
Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2018
Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2017
Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2016
Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2015
Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2013 R2
Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2013
Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009 R2
Earlier versions can be supported with technical upgrade