TechBlog

A Tip from the old box – installing a localized Navision version on an English SBS Server

iby — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 00:04:42 +0000

Recently I have been implemented a Danish version of Dynamics Navision 2009 SP1 on an English SBS server and there I meet an old “friend”.

The old “friend” was a problem with the Danish letter Ø. The letter was displayed as Ȼ which is not the right sign (actually the data was also corrupt ). At first side everything looked fine in the regional settings and the language was set to Danish – but then I looked on the Advance page and voilá there we had the answer. Code Page 850 was not selected.

After a selection of the code page and a reboot of the server, the letter Ø was now displayed correctly. Yeah!

This did though not solve all my problems. Unfortunately the data was been corrupted, due to the wrong code page. Luckily this was a new installation of Navision, so all I had to do was restore my locally build database again.

This was a new installation of Navision and not an Upgrade. If this had not been the case, it would have been necessary to correct the data “manually”. DOH! Not an ideal situation.

This time I was Lucky – next time I might not be so lucky. So in the future, I will personally check the regional settings before restoring the database.

So – always remember to check the regional settings, before you are restoring a localized Navision Database. You might else run into the same problems as I did.

Fun Stuff – Dynamics Xmas Greeting

iby — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 01:03:38 +0000

I wish you all a Merry Christmas!

In the spirit of the upcoming holidays I have been playing around with Dynamics Navision.
The result was a Dynamics Xmas Greeting

Source code for the Dynamics Xmas Greeting:

OBJECT Form 60002 DynamicsXmas
{
  OBJECT-PROPERTIES
  {
    Date=15-12-09;
    Time=00:06:15;
    Modified=Yes;
    Version List=;
  }
  PROPERTIES
  {
    Width=15070;
    Height=9350;
    BackColor=16777215;
    TimerInterval=10;
    OnOpenForm=BEGIN
 
                 timeNo := 0;
               END;
 
    OnTimer=BEGIN
 
              IF (CurrForm.XPOS-10000) > CurrForm.santapic.XPOS THEN
                CurrForm.santapic.XPOS := CurrForm.XPOS + CurrForm.WIDTH
              ELSE
                CurrForm.santapic.XPOS := CurrForm.santapic.XPOS - 100;
 
              JingleBells(timeNo);
              timeNo += 1;
            END;
 
  }
  CONTROLS
  {
    { 1000000000;Label  ;3080 ;330  ;8800 ;2420 ;HorzAlign=General;
                                                 ForeColor=255;
                                                 FontName=Freehand521 BT;
                                                 FontSize=30;
                                                 FontBold=Yes;
                                                 LeaderDots=No;
                                                 CaptionML=DAN=Merry Christmas }
    { 1000000003;TextBox;3190 ;2970 ;8470 ;770  ;Name=song;
                                                 Focusable=No;
                                                 HorzAlign=Left;
                                                 VertAlign=Top;
                                                 BackTransparent=Yes;
                                                 Border=No;
                                                 FontSize=12;
                                                 FontBold=Yes;
                                                 MultiLine=Yes;
                                                 SourceExpr=SongText }
    { 1000000004;TextBox;3190 ;3850 ;8470 ;660  ;Name=song1;
                                                 Focusable=No;
                                                 HorzAlign=Left;
                                                 VertAlign=Top;
                                                 ForeColor=0;
                                                 BackTransparent=Yes;
                                                 Border=No;
                                                 FontSize=12;
                                                 FontBold=Yes;
                                                 MultiLine=Yes;
                                                 SourceExpr=SongText1 }
    { 1000000002;Image  ;9790 ;4730 ;4840 ;4400 ;Name=santapic;
                                                 Bitmap=c:\work\santa081.bmp }
    { 1000000001;Image  ;11770;330  ;3080 ;4400 ;Bitmap=c:\work\Christmastree2.bmp }
    { 1000000005;Image  ;0    ;330  ;3080 ;4400 ;Bitmap=c:\work\Christmastree2.bmp }
  }
  CODE
  {
    VAR
      SongText@1000000000 : Text[1024];
      SongText1@1000000002 : Text[1024];
      timeNo@1000000003 : Integer;
 
    PROCEDURE JingleBells@1000000019(no@1000000000 : Integer);
    BEGIN
 
      CASE no OF
        1: BEGIN
              SongText := 'Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells';
              SongText1 := 'Jingle all the way!';
              CurrForm.song.UPDATE;
              CurrForm.song1.UPDATE;
 
              BEEP(659,250);
            END;
        2:  BEEP(659,250);
        3:  BEEP(659,500);
        4:  BEEP(659,250);
        5:  BEEP(659,250);
        6:  BEEP(659,500);
        7:  BEEP(659,250);
        8:  BEEP(783,250);
        9:  BEEP(523,375);
        10: BEEP(587,125);
        11: BEEP(659,1000);
        12: BEGIN
              SongText := 'Oh what fun it is to ride';
              SongText1 := 'In a one horse open sleigh! Hey';
              CurrForm.song.UPDATE;
              CurrForm.song1.UPDATE;
 
              BEEP(698,250);
            END;
        13: BEEP(698,250);
        14: BEEP(698,375);
        15: BEEP(698,125);
        16: BEEP(698,250);
        17: BEEP(659,250);
        18: BEEP(659,250);
        19: BEEP(659,250);
        20: BEEP(659,250);
        21: BEEP(587,250);
        22: BEEP(587,250);
        23: BEEP(659,250);
        24: BEEP(587,500);
        25: BEEP(783,500);
        26: BEGIN
              SongText := 'Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells';
              SongText1 := 'Jingle all the way!';
              CurrForm.song.UPDATE;
              CurrForm.song1.UPDATE;
 
              BEEP(659,250);
            END;
        27: BEEP(659,250);
        28: BEEP(659,500);
        29: BEEP(659,250);
        30: BEEP(659,250);
        31: BEEP(659,500);
        32: BEEP(659,250);
        33: BEEP(783,250);
        34: BEEP(523,375);
        35: BEEP(587,125);
        36: BEEP(659,1000);
        37: BEGIN
              SongText := 'Oh what fun it is to ride';
              SongText1 := 'In a one horse open sleigh!';
              CurrForm.song.UPDATE;
              CurrForm.song1.UPDATE;
 
              BEEP(698,250);
            END;
        38: BEEP(698,250);
        39: BEEP(698,375);
        40: BEEP(698,125);
        41: BEEP(698,250);
        42: BEEP(659,250);
        43: BEEP(659,250);
        44: BEEP(659,250);
        45: BEEP(783,250);
        46: BEEP(783,250);
        47: BEEP(698,250);
        48: BEEP(587,250);
        49: BEEP(523,1000);
      END;
    END;
 
    BEGIN
    END.
  }
}

Understanding the Difference between the 4 Microsoft Dynamics ERPs (NAV, GP, SL and AX)

iby — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 20:49:31 +0000

I was invited by Houston Neal, Manufacturing Software Advice, to comment on his post regarding the difference between NAV, GP, SL and AX.

It was quite an interesting reading and I must say that Houston did a splendid job in describing the different Microsoft ERP packages.

If you are about to choose one of the ERPs from Microsoft and are in doubt about what to choose; then take a look at his article. It gives you an overview of each of the ERPs packages broken down into Modules and which makes it easy for you to compare them.

You can read his complete post here.

Shortcuts – where are they stored and how to copy them

iby — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 21:45:24 +0000

Shortcuts was first introduced in NAV 4.0 – and did made the world of Navision a bit easier

If you have customers or work in a company with a lot of users, you might wish to set up a template user.

The creation of a template user is pretty simple. Just create a new user and add the shortcuts you would like to have.

Now – where are the shortcuts stored? You can locate them in the table 2000000061 User Menu Level in the field Object. Unfortunately the field Object is a blob field – so all you see is *.

If you export the Object field to a file – you will notice that the shortcuts are stored binary and that all shortcuts are stored in one blob field.

This is not very editable!

Now that we know that all shortcuts are stored in one blob field – but is it possible to copy or move the shortcuts to another user?

Yes – you have several ways to do it:

In it is within the same database you can simply use copy & paste
If it is between servers you can use export / import

The export can be done like this:


uml.SETRANGE(ID,'templateuser');
IF uml.FINDFIRST THEN BEGIN
  uml.CALCFIELDS(Object);
  uml.Object.EXPORT('c:\menulevel.bin',FALSE);
END;
 
where uml is a User Menu Level record

and the import can be done like this:


uml.SETRANGE(ID,'copytouser');
IF uml.FINDFIRST THEN BEGIN
  CLEAR(uml.Object);
  uml.Object.IMPORT('c:\menulevel.bin',FALSE);
  uml.MODIFY(FALSE);
END;
 
where uml is a User Menu Level record

Before doing the import – you must be sure that a record for the specific user exists in the User Menu Level table. The entry in the User Menu Level table is done automatically when the specific user logs into Navision.

This means, that “old” users should already have an entry in the table, whereas new users must perform at least one login before you copy the User Menu Level.

I have tried to copy the record without user’s login in a least one time – but the system overwrites the record.

Now you have successfully copied the shortcuts from a template user to another user.

The downside of this method is that you cannot those which shortcuts to copy, you can only copy either all shortcuts or none.

Hey… where are my menu items?

iby — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 20:27:19 +0000

Today I had a funny error – my menu items in the navigation pane did disappear if I made shortcuts to them.

Therefore I did some testing and here is what a figured out:

Open a fresh client
Add shortcuts to a menu item or a menu group
Check shortcuts – they were created fine

Check menu items – they are also still here
Now close the client
Open a fresh client
Check shortcuts – they are still there
Check menu items and they are now disappeared… huh what happenend here???

If I now want to restore the missing menu item – I unfortunately has to clear the users record in “User Menu Level”. Not a ideal situation!

So what to do? Don’t bother looking into you code; it is not a code error. After some searching I did find out that this a known error Navision.

This error affects NAV 2009 and NAV 5.0 SP1 and you can get a hot fix from Microsoft. Just locate the article with id. 970545 – here the problem is described and you will also be able to get a hot fix.

RoleTailored Client – Where is the Default Page?

iby — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 20:10:18 +0000

Have you also been wondering about which page are the default page, where to set it up and what to do if a user should have a different page.

Well… it is actually pretty easy

1) What is the default page? The default page is usually page 9006 “Order Processor Role Center”.

So how did I find it out? Well I think like a developer – so why use forms, when you can go straight into tables

In table 2000000072 Profile you can locate the different profiles. Each profile has a startup Page attached. Furthermore you can also locate a field called “Default Role Center”. All you now have to do is set a filter on this field and viola you have discovered the default page.

Btw. the correct way would properly be Administration -> Application Setup -> RoleTailored Client -> Profiles

2) Where do I set it up?

Well haven’t I already answered it??? If not – all I have to say is Profiles….

3) How to give a user a different start up page? Use Profiles and “User Personalization”

Ok – I have in 1) already described Profiles – so before going into “User Personalization” be sure, that you have defined a new (or reused) a user specific profile.

Next go into “User Personalization” and attach a profile to your user by filling “Profile ID” – that’s all, now has the specific user a new start up page.

Where to find “User Personalization”? Go into either table 2000000073 “User Personalization” or the clean way Administration -> Application Setup -> RoleTailored Client -> User Personalization