Can you remember when you last set up the data in your current NAV or Business Central system? Whether this happened many years ago or more recently, an essential part of the process is to enter master data and opening balances. We hope that you did not enter this large volume of data manually and instead used the data migration functionality within Business Central to validate and import the data in the Excel spreadsheets into your system.
This powerful set of functionalities are mundanely described as configuration packages. However, they previously had the wonderful name - RapidStart.
Configuration packages were able to simplify that early data migration exercise. However, don’t forget about this functionality - it may prove to be useful even after the process of ‘going live’ is already accomplished.
Here are a few post-go live usage examples to bear in mind:
- Create a data file – Use a configuration package to generate an Excel file. This is an inexpensive and reliable solution to export data from Business Central, used on an ad-hoc or regular basis.
- Update existing records – Use a configuration package to export data from Business Central to a file that can be edited by Excel and re-imported. This can be a time-saving approach, such as applying the mass changes required to correct a recurring spelling mistake, updating postcodes in address details, or modifying phone number dialing code (STD) values.
- Add new records – Use a configuration package to import data into Business Central to easily add a new set of customers, vendors or item records into your system.
One final thought - During the data migration process, you may have used configuration templates in conjunction with configuration packages.
These templates allow standard information associated with a table or a group of records to be used as a default when new records arrive for that table. It is strongly recommended that configuration templates be used to simplify the creation of new records and enforce consistency in, for example, the customer, vendor and item tables.
