What is a role in Microsoft Dynamics NAV? A role defines what menu items you see as well as what appears on your Role Center (the main page you see when you log into NAV). Below is the default Sales Order Processor role.

An optimally configured role would give users quick access to their most often used pages, reports and functions, would provide useful information at a glance through the use of tiles (see blue squares above) and contain any other relevant information.

You can assign the default roles to users and begin using them and while this is better than not using any roles at all, for ease-of-use and efficiency, it is highly recommended to tailor roles for your organization.

The Role Center is just another page with an important distinction - custom code cannot be written on the page. This is intentional so that non-development resources can set up their own roles. However, setting up roles is a technical endeavor and requires use of the development environment, so is most easily done by a developer, though non-development resources could be trained to configure roles. However, before volunteering to set up all the roles for a company, it would be a good idea to observe a resource seasoned in configuring roles before committing to the task. It is not a simple point-and-click affair and not-at-all intuitive if you are not familiar with the NAV development environment.

A good procedure to take in configuring roles would be:

1) Look over the standard roles in NAV. Best done by running the roles using the Development environment. These are in the 9000 page number range.
2) Make a list of the roles for your company. E.g. (CFO, Controller, A/R Manager, A/P Manager, Sales Order Processor, Inventory Control, etc.)
3) For each role, list out the pages and reports that role will need access to. Use the standard role as a guide.   Consult with an actual user of the future role while doing this.
4) List any tiles that may be useful for the Role.   Tiles display a numerical value which usually drills down into further detail. E.g. A tile that shows the number of open sales orders. When clicking on the tile, the user views a list of open sales orders.   The standard roles may have tiles you would like to incorporate into your role or may give you ideas for other tiles.   Consult with an actual user of the future role while doing this.
5) Once you have defined the roles and what is to be contained in them, you can start configuring roles. It is best to start with an existing role, copy it and configure the copied role.  This will leave all of the standard roles untouched and they can be used for reference.
6) Finally, assign the role to a future user of that role and have them test it out and get their feedback and make any desired changes.

Optimally configured roles should result in users being able to carry out their jobs more efficiently within Microsoft Dynamics NAV, highlight key data and metrics, reduce training time, and time spent locating screens, reports and functions.

The Importance of Roles in Microsoft Dynamics NAV