Goodbye and see you soon!

I've started working for Microsoft in Vienna on October 15th, so see you at some Dynamics events !

Dynamics AX 2009 released

The long awaited Dynamics AX 2009 has been released. The RTM (Ready-to-Manufacturing) setup can be downloaded from Partnersource: https://mbs.microsoft.com/...

AX 2009 feature: cross company support

Today I found an exciting new feature in Dynamics AX 2009: cross company support in forms, reports, queries and X++.
Yes, and it really is what you think: you can display records from different companies in a single form (or report). Yeah !

For a form, you just have to set the property AllowCrossCompany to Yes in the form's query and add a field that displays the company's ID to the forms's grid. That's it. Easy as that!

In X++, there is a new keyword crossCompany you can use in a select statement. Additionally, you can add a container with all the company ID's you want to include in your select statement.
So, your select statement could look like that:

while select salestable crossCompany : [dmo, cos]
{
... do something ...
}

Now, that's really a huge step forward from the good old changeCompany function.

New book: Quality assurance for Dynamics AX-Based ERP Solutions

The last days I could read a new book about Dynamics AX: Quality assurance for Dynamics AX-Based ERP Solutions

The target audience is project managers, AX developers, AX consultants, AX customers and all others who are interested in managing quality in Dynamics AX projects.

The book is divided into 9 chapters:
the first two chapters will introduce Dynamics AX as an ERP system and how it helps you to maintain quality in your customizations.
Chapter 3, "Best practices - Technical" gives you hints on how to use several AX customization standards.
Chapter 4, "Best practices - GUI" contains detailed checklists that you should follow designing your user interface.
Chapters 5 to 8 are giving an overview about how testing should be performed.
The last chapter contains an overview about the Dynamics AX tools you can use to guarantee quality in Dynamics AX.

How did I like the book? Well, there are some things in the book that can be useful, like the checklists for the user interface and the overview of the checks the built-in best-practice tool performs.
But there are 2-3 chapters in the book I could easily live without.

On an overall rating, I would give the book 6 out of 10 points.

If you want to order a copy, you can get it from Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Quality-Assurance-Dynamics-AX-Based-Solutions/dp/1847192912/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1208193317&sr=8-1

The book was published by Packt Publishing: http://www.packtpub.com/

What's new in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009

You can download a couple of Docs and Powerpoint files about what's new in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 from Partnersource: https://mbs.microsoft.com/...

Take a look to find out all the exciting new features!

eBook "Inside Dynamics AX 4.0" available for download

The great book "Inside Microsoft Dynamics AX 4.0" is available as a free download now.
You can go to: http://download.microsoft.com/download/2/5/8/258C8894-B94A-4A87-81EA-4DBB9776F8F2/622579eBook.pdf to download your copy.

Attention: You may not print the PDF document.

User Experience Guidelines (beta version) for Dynamics AX 2009

You can download the guidlines for the user interface in Dynamics AX 2009 from Microsoft: >http://www.microsoft.com/...

With that, you will also get an idea how the user interface will look like in Dynamics AX 2009.

Open web pages from X++ code

If you want to open the Internet Explorer with a certain web page directly from X++ code, you can use the following statement:

infoLog.urlLookup('http://nameofthepageyouwanttoopen.com');

Thus, your browser will open and display the URL.

Displaying online help on installations with multiple windows languages

In Dynamics AX, you can specify your client config to be usable if you have different windows languages (this means that your AX client is not always in the "c:\program files\..." directory but also in "c:\programme\...").

Then, you would make the link pointing to your ax32.exe something like this: "%programfiles%\Microsoft Dynamics AX\40\Client\Bin\Ax32.exe" (and the bindir property of you AX client config would be: "%programfiles%\Microsoft Dynamics AX\40\Client\Bin")

With that setup, you can start your Dynamics AX client on any language that is used by Windows.

Well, there is one problem with the online help then. Dynamics AX cannot build the path where to search for the help file using the %programfiles% parameter and will give you an error when you activate the help.

What you have to do is to change the way the online help will create the path.
You have to modifiy the method getChmPath in class SysHelp as follows:

modifiy the line:

path = xInfo::directory(DirectoryType::Help);

to that:

if (WinAPi::fileExists('c:\\program files\\Microsoft Dynamics AX\\40\\Client\\Bin\\Help\\'))

path = 'c:\\program files\\Microsoft Dynamics
AX\\40\\Client\\Bin\\Help\\';

else if (WinAPi::fileExists('c:\\programme\\Microsoft Dynamics AX\\40\\Client\\Bin\\Help\\'))

path = 'c:\\programme\\Microsoft Dynamics
AX\\40\\Client\\Bin\\Help\\';

else path = xInfo::directory(DirectoryType::Help);

The change above will work for english and german windows installations and you can figure out how to extend that to other languages.

Getting new table fields into your form datasource (part 2)

After receiving some comments to my previous post (well, in fact it was my intention to get some feedback on it how to do that properly), here is the way to get your new fields of your table to your form's datasource:

after you have added the fields in the table and saved the table, go to the form where the table is used as a datasource, right click on it and select "Restore". After that, you will have your new table fields available in your form's datasource.

A big thanx to denis and jamie for providing me comments on that !

Getting new table fields into your form datasource

When you create new fields in a table and then go into a form where this table is used, you will not see the new fields in the forms datasource. You could be tempted to go into the properties of the datasource and re-select the table (which would actually add all the new fields).

BUT: Don't do it! You will loose all your modifications and methods made in the datasource !

Better: just exit the Dynamics AX client and enter again. Then, all new fields will appear in your datasource.

Copying one line of a grid to Excel

If you want to copy just one line from a Dynamics AX grid to Excel and you just click on the line marker of the grid to select the line, press Ctrl-C in Dynamics AX and then Ctrl-V in Excel, you will not get the line into Excel. Sometimes you will only have one active field of the line in Excel.

What you have to do: press SHIFT when you select the line. Then, copy and paste the line into Excel and it will work and copy the whole line.