All around NAV dev and test
I was pointed at some useful recordings on the Dynamics NAV ERP channel on you-tube about Role-Tailoring Dynamics NAV 2009. Thought it might be of interested to you, your colleagues or even your customer.
BTW: Couldn't help thinking of Laurel and Hardy at the start of each recording (1 through 6).
Update 20110830: just asked my son what his first thought was when looking at the picture above. Guess what he said?
Ever since our team moved to TFS, because of it's source control system, we are heavily making use of the NAV 2009 SP1 C/SIDE features EXPORTOBJECTS and IMPORTOBJECTS. And even way before that I personally used it frequently. No need anymore for an external tool like Text Object Splitter, NAV Object Splitter, Dynamics NAV Object Text File Splitter, or what else that's out there on the 'market'. We can export and import C/SIDE objects straight out of NAV and having full control on how we want it.
How? Have a look at these reports:
What do we do with them? Well, we sync our development databases by importing the application objects (in .txt format) from our workspace using this batch job (REP77777) when we need an update of our objects (typically when we start working). And when the work is done we export them to the same workspace with another batch job (REP77778).
Feel free to use the reports for your own purposes. Of course if you have any addition and/or improvement to them I would be pleased if you would share them with me.
My colleague consultant did pose this question this morning. Or actually he was expressing a disappointment both he and a customer were sharing that apparently any page activated through various line actions do open a page without the Minimize/Maximize buttons on the top right corner of the window. I must admit: I probably did notice this half consciously a dozen times, but never really wondered why.
Some simple test on the Sales Order page, opening the Reservations Entries page from a sales line, showed me that the appearance of the Minimize/Maximize buttons depend on the the mode in which the page is called. Typically this code is activating the Reservations Entries page:
ShowReservationEntries(Modal : Boolean)TESTFIELD(Type,Type::Item);TESTFIELD("No.");ReservEngineMgt.InitFilterAndSortingLookupFor(ReservEntry,TRUE);ReserveSalesLine.FilterReservFor(ReservEntry,Rec);IF Modal THEN FORM.RUNMODAL(FORM::"Reservation Entries",ReservEntry)ELSE FORM.RUN(FORM::"Reservation Entries",ReservEntry);
In our context ShowReservationEntries is called with Modal is TRUE and the Minimize/Maximize buttons are missing:
Indeed if we call with Modal is FALSE the buttons are shown:
In the almost 3 years of having NAV 2009 out my colleague surely wasn't the only to notice this. F.e. this mibuso post did discuss the issue already, where Mark Brummel gives some kind of explanation to the why, but still leaves us unsatisfied. As such the absence of the Minimize makes full sense to me. But having a Maximize button would be very welcome.
If you agree with me feel free to give your vote here.
Yesterday I took over some bugs from one of my colleagues. Among them one reporting an anomaly on page 30. Have a look:
OK, hardly to be called a bug, but I have to agree with the bug reporter that it doesn't really look fancy, this quintet of those well known black pool balls.
[For those interested: the commands typically lacking images are part of one of our add-ons.]
As a user I would definitely suspect the developer (or designer) had suffered an off-day. On the other hand inside MS it was- and probably still is - strictly forbidden to reuse an image for actions akin, as an image was designed uniquely for an action. Needed an image for a new action? Apply for a new one!
But outside of MS? Well no one checking us, isn't it? So we can populate the Image property with whatever image name we like. Various listings at hand to identify image and it's name:
Although I did a lot of searching, typically there seem to be no specific guidelines for partners about what can and cannot be done with images. So I decided we will simply reuse the existing images. Looks much better isn't it?
Indeed, still one pool ball left as I could no find a satisfying image, but I can surely live with that single black spot.