When I first saw the Microsoft OneNote buttons in Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2013 I didn’t pay much attention. But when I finally tried it out myself, I saw a very usable tool for both capturing comments and or files related to NAV records and for doing company specific instructions for the different parts of the application.
Microsoft OneNote is designed to function as an electronic version of a paper notebook. Microsoft OneNote is a note-taking and personal information management (PIM) application for collecting, organizing and sharing digital information. By storing text notes, photos, audio and video snippets, handwriting and similar content, Microsoft OneNote collects and organizes the information, making it available for searching as well as sharing with others. Source: Webopedia.com
How Microsoft OneNote integrates with Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2013
The setup where you define the OneNote notebooks are in the profiles. This allows you to enable the OneNote functionality for only some profiles. The OneNote notes can be related to individual records or to a page (for specific instructions) in Microsoft Dynamics NAV.
Image 1: Order Processor Profile Setup
Notes that are related to records are accessed with the OneNote action item on the ribbons (or by Alt+F7). The intention of the record notes are to capture notes, pictures, movies, files, etc. related to the record.
Image 2: Example of a Note linked to a Record
You can drag and drop files into a OneNote note, when doing this you get a dialog asking if you want to insert a copy of the file or link to it. Inserting files like this will allow everybody that has access to the Notebook to open the file.
Notes that are related to a page can be accessed from each page under the help menu (or by Ctrl+Shift+F1). The intention of the page notes is to create company specific help notes and instructions.
Image 3: Click on the Help button to link a page specific note
Image 4: Example of a page specific note for the cash receipt journal
Dynamics NAV then creates one OneNote file per record type in the defined folders.
Image 5: The notes are saved on the network
OneNote offers a different way of linking documents. We could also use the links functionality but OneNote offers a more visible interface than the links.