Sorry!

Yesterday the blog was not available for some hours. There must have been some error during the last publishment of the blog so it wasn't displayed. Anyway, it's working again.

And to give you something to look for: I am doing a little project with which you can choose "Excel" as filetype in Axapta and the report will be opened in Excel afterwards automatically.

I figured out how to get the MSN RSS feeds, so here is an updated list of the feeds (new ones are in red):

feed://feeds.feedburner.com/axaptafreak
feed://blogs.msdn.com/palle_agermark/rss.xml
feed://blogs.msdn.com/tomb/rss.xml
feed://blogs.msdn.com/nolansax/rss.xml
feed://blogs.msdn.com/solutions/rss.xml
feed://blogs.msdn.com/shailan/rss.xml
feed://blogs.msdn.com/satyanadella/rss.xml
feed://blogs.msdn.com/katolgu/rss.xml
feed://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/fHBl
feed://blog.ak-home.net/SyndicationService.asmx/GetRss (Feed is in german)
feed://casperkamal.spaces.msn.com/feed.rss
feed://fredshen.spaces.msn.com/feed.rss
feed://dynamicsandmore.spaces.msn.com/feed.rss
feed://axgeek.spaces.msn.com/feed.rss

Tes procedure to check whether you can send mails via SMTP

I am trying to do some emailing out of Axapta at the moment and I found an old post in the development-axapta mailing list that provides a way to check whether you can send mails via SMTP using telnet.
You can take a look at the post here: http://www.mail-archive.com/development-axapta@yahoogroups.com/msg09750.html

Another tip: if you have installed McAfee VirusScan, it might block all connections on port 25 on your PC (to avoid mass-mailing viruses using this standard SMTP port). So check it and disable it if you want to use SMTP from your PC.

Axapta Blogs and one more feed

Well, first of all: of course I forgot my own RSS feed in the list! Gosh! So here it is of course:
feed://feeds.feedburner.com/axaptafreak

And here are some other excellent blogs that do not have an RSS feed unfortunately: (the later ones do not show much activity but the first ones are brilliant)
http://axcoder.blogspot.com/
http://fredshen.spaces.msn.com/PersonalSpace.aspx
http://casperkamal.spaces.msn.com/PersonalSpace.aspx
http://axaptabuilder.blogspot.com/
http://dynamicsdoodles.blogspot.com/
http://axutilities.blogspot.com/
http://axgeek.spaces.msn.com/PersonalSpace.aspx?_c=

Dynamics AX 4.0 Implementation Guide

You can download the new implementation guide here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?...

It seems like it's the same as the online version in MSDN and unfortunately it misses the same pages, too. But it's better than nothing, isn't it?

Axapta RSS Feeds

Here is a list of some Axapta RSS feeds:

feed://blogs.msdn.com/palle_agermark/rss.xml
feed://blogs.msdn.com/tomb/rss.xml
feed://blogs.msdn.com/nolansax/rss.xml
feed://blogs.msdn.com/solutions/rss.xml
feed://blogs.msdn.com/shailan/rss.xml
feed://blogs.msdn.com/satyanadella/rss.xml
feed://blogs.msdn.com/katolgu/rss.xml
http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/fHBl
feed://blog.ak-home.net/SyndicationService.asmx/GetRss (Feed is in german)

Project: Create Multi Files from xpo

Hi!
A long time ago, I wanted to be able to have the old XAL way of exporting elements in Axapta: that every element gets its own file. Therefore I made a class which will exactly do that. Parameters are: filename of xpo file and directory where the single files will be stored.
What will the class do: it will go through the xpo, scan for elements and make one file for each element. Then, you can use a file comparison tool (e.g. Beyond Compare) to compare the two directories and you will see all the new elements, changed elements and so on.

So, what is it for?
I have been using this class for years to compare releases, whole layers of different applications and so on.
I also used it for comparing new service packs to old service packs: just export a whole standard application and another one with SP1, run the class on both xpo files and compare the two directories with a file comparison tool.

There are some limitations to the class:

1. You cannot re-import the created file. Reason: I have to remove one line in the file where the date of the export is stored. Due to the multi-language capabilites of Axapta I cannot figure out where that string begins. But I never wanted to re-import the xpo due to limitiation number 2:
   
2. The created file will not have the nice layout of the original. It will miss all additional spaces. This is due to the fact that Axapta cuts off unnecessary spaces when reading lines into a container.
   The project can be used for Axapta 3.0 xpo files.

Anyway, I hope you will enjoy this little tool. You can also drop me a line into my inbox.
The project can be downloaded from the Dynamics User Group site here: http://dynamicsuser.net/files/18/ax_tools/entry1933.aspx