What about the extensions? Why country, and language discrimination?

I started a new set of videos testing free extensions, I wanted to talk about the benefits of those developments and how easy are they installed, how to setup them and finally, how these code pieces can help Business Central and those companies to get more functionality and better results.

What a mess I found mixed with what it seems to me, a lot of country and language discrimination for partners from all the globe.

When I started to test those extensions, I avoided those which i´ve tested before for a later videos and check in the appsource some extensions.

I chose the first 2, no problem, installed and runs fine (I have my test tenant with an MX environment, english and spanish(mexico)).

I can understand that some partner doesnt want to invest in more language packs besides english and their local languages, this can be managed and if you ask in the forums, maybe you can find people enough capable to make the traslation to other languages, or simply pay. I can use the system in en-US and es-ES or other es, but some users in latam area dont speak english as some english speakers doesnt speak spanish, or french or any other language.

Also I’ve found some very interesting extensions, but “only US and Canada“.

Some others has a countries list excluding explicity latam zone and yes, they include spanish but no the latam spanish speaking countries.

I love Zetadocs Expenses, when a customer asks for this kind of extension I always say “ZetaDocs”, why? easy, the extension works fine, and the only limitation is “All countries where Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central is available.”, in my point of view this is an error because we can sell Business Central in Panama, even if Microsoft doesnt put BC available in that country, or Puerto Rico, or CostaRica, is the cloud remember?

Found another partners like Kumavision (great partner by the way), they also lack of language support but their extensions can be deployed in any country version.

Lets talk about some limitations when you have localizations, yes, sometimes you dont have enough knowledge about the country legal requirements and is better to keep distance of that. Totally agree with this.

But what happends when your extension works out of the localization boundaries, like a customer loyalty program, just to provide “pass cards”, you need to assign that manually, is just a control and some flowfields in pages. This Extension comes with the “This app is available in Australia, Austria, Germany, Indonesia, Malaysia, New Zealand, Singapore, South Africa, Thailand, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom and United States.” availability, ok I dont use this, even if I have a lead asking for that functionality, We need to develop that.

Remember the “only US an Canda”? well I’ve asked to the partner, are you thinking in sale your product in Latam? I have 2 opportunities, if you want, i can translate you extension, just send me the xliff, also, we are looking for a partnership to promote your product.

The answer was: “no, we dont think to got to latam and we dont want to sale there”.

Ok, we develop our own maintenance module and we already started selling it, so, keep your extension, we have our own code.

When Windows Phone come to life, many people bought a windows phone, we fal in love with the interface, the easy of use, the clean desk, I really miss my phone. Microsoft tries to create a development community but every one pulls to their own side, even Microsoft.

Now, Windows Phone is dead.

I´ve talked with one of my colleagues in the company, we are competing against Odoo, its seems to me that Odoo has a growing and very interested community, they have even localizations! and the price levels are a joke.

I want to finish this post with:

I will continue testing and showing extensions that can work in latam regardless of the language.
I going to try to make some free pieces of code to help companies in latam to cover those requirements that the discriminating partners doesnt want to sell in the area.

And, @Microsoft, remember…..

Windows Phone is dead.