Almost every time when I deliver training on the Role Tailored Client and talk about the personalization features I get a question from a student: Is it possible to disable the "customize this page" feature for a page in the RTC?

My answer always is: "No, not to my knowledge." Until now that is…

I was thinking, maybe this could be an undocumented feature somehow? Let's try something. I already knew that you could start the Role Tailored Client from the command prompt and supply it with parameters.

And there was nothing in here about personalization. But let's try it anyway.

Let's see what happens?

Wow, it works J The Customize options are gone. Nice, not?

I also tried some other spelling variants like for example:

• -disablepersonalisation
• -disable personalization
• -disablepersonalisation

but without success.

• -disablepersonalization is the one.

Then I also tested it on a NAV 2009 SP1 version, but then this happens:

So it seems to be something that was added in NAV 2009 R2.

Then I thought, I must not be the only one that knows about this feature. So I went on the web and found that on the Mibuso forum, someone else also tumbled upon this feature. You can see the thread here: http://www.mibuso.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=45705

And it seems that using – or / produces the same result. And as you can see, you can also use the parameter in the NAV 2009 R2 Shortcut.

Of course nothing prevents the user from removing this parameter J

Ever wanted to copy a table to another database in Sql Server, including the data ?

Well there are several options like for example the Copy Database Wizard, the Import/Export Wizard, Integration Services, … But as from Sql Server 2008 there's a new, not very well documented option: The Generate Scripts Wizard.

Right click on a database in Sql Server Management Studio 2008 and select Generate Scripts:

Then select the database, and in the next screen select what you would like to script, like for example Data (which is not selected by default):

Then select the object(s) you would like to script:

Now, choose how you would like the script to be generated:

And voila:

INSERT [dbo].[CRONUS International Ltd_$Customer]

([No_], [Name], [Search Name], [Name 2], [Address], [Address 2], [City], [Contact], [Phone No_], [Telex No_], [Our Account No_], [Territory Code], [Global Dimension 1 Code], [Global Dimension 2 Code], [Chain Name], [Budgeted Amount], [Credit Limit (LCY)], [Customer Posting Group], [Currency Code], [Customer Price Group], [Language Code], [Statistics Group], [Payment Terms Code], [Fin_ Charge Terms Code], [Salesperson Code], [Shipment Method Code], [Shipping Agent Code], [Place of Export], [Invoice Disc_ Code], [Customer Disc_ Group], [Country_Region Code], [Collection Method], [Amount], [Blocked], [Invoice Copies], [Last Statement No_], [Print Statements], [Bill-to Customer No_], [Priority], [Payment Method Code], [Last Date Modified], [Application Method], [Prices Including VAT], [Location Code], [Fax No_], [Telex Answer Back], [VAT Registration No_], [Combine Shipments], [Gen_ Bus_ Posting Group], [Picture], [Post Code], [County], [E-Mail], [Home Page], [Reminder Terms Code], [No_ Series], [Tax Area Code], [Tax Liable], [VAT Bus_ Posting Group], [Reserve], [Block Payment Tolerance], [IC Partner Code], [Prepayment %], [Primary Contact No_], [Responsibility Center], [Shipping Advice], [Shipping Time], [Shipping Agent Service Code], [Service Zone Code], [Allow Line Disc_], [Base Calendar Code], [Copy Sell-to Addr_ to Qte From])

VALUES

(N'01121212', N'Spotsmeyer''s Furnishings', N'SPOTSMEYER''S FURNISHINGS', N'', N'612 South Sunset Drive', N'', N'Miami', N'Mr. Mike Nash', N'', N'', N'', N'FOREIGN', N'SALES', N'', N'', CAST(0.00000000000000000000 AS Decimal(38, 20)), CAST(0.00000000000000000000 AS Decimal(38, 20)), N'FOREIGN', N'USD', N'', N'ENU', 0, N'1M(8D)', N'2.0 FOR.', N'JR', N'EXW', N'', N'', N'01121212', N'', N'US', N'', CAST(0.00000000000000000000 AS Decimal(38, 20)), 0, 0, 0, 1, N'01454545', 0, N'', CAST(0x00009C6500000000 AS DateTime), 0, 0, N'YELLOW', N'', N'', N'', 1, N'EXPORT', NULL, N'US-FL 37125', N'', N'spotsmeyer''[email protected]', N'', N'FOREIGN', N'', N'', 0, N'EXPORT', 1, 0, N'', CAST(0.00000000000000000000 AS Decimal(38, 20)), N'', N'', 0, N'', N'', N'X', 1, N'', 0)

…

As you might already know, it is possible to debug pages in Dynamics NAV 2009. There are already some blog postings out there that explain how to do this.

To enable Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009 for debugging:

1. On the computer running Microsoft Dynamics NAV Server, open the CustomSettings.config file.
   This file is typically located at %programfiles%\Microsoft Dynamics NAV\60\service.
2. Change the value of the EnableDebugging key to true:
   <add key="EnableDebugging" value="true" />
3. Save and close the CustomSettings.config file.
4. In Control Panel, click Administrative Tools, and then click Services to open the Services snap-in.
5. In the list of services, right-click Microsoft Dynamics NAV Server, and then click Restart.
6. When you start the RoleTailored client with debugging enabled, C# files for every RoleTailored client object are generated.
   
   
7. You can view these C# files in Visual Studio.
   Navigate to "C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Microsoft Dynamics NAV\60\Server\MicrosoftDynamicsNavServer\source"

That's great, but only 1 problem: I do not have a directory called C:\ProgramData, because I'm not running windows Vista, I'm still running good old windows XP ???

Solution:

In the Application Event log, find the entry that has MicrosoftDynamicsNAVServer for its Source and has the following description:

Service: <service name>

Source files for debugging are available under <source file location>

Now open windows explorer and voila:

We finally found the files and we can use them in Visual Studio for debugging !!!

When developping reports for the Role Tailored Client one anoying thing is that you can not really debug reports. In NAV 2009 service pack 1 a new feature is available that can help debugging reports. This feature will allow you to see the resultset/dataset that was generated for a report.

How to enable this feature ?

While in Preview mode you can Zoom into the underlying dataset of the report. In NAV 2009 RTM use this shortcut: CTRL+SHIFT+ALT+F12. If you are using NAV 2009 SP1 the shortcut has changed to CTRL+ALT+F1 and it is also accessible from the help menu.

This will enable the feature and the following message will be displayed:

Now, just close and reopen the report and the dataset will be visualized in another popup window:

In the Role Tailored Client you have a new functionality to use called Notes. Note work very similar to Comments in the Classic Client. For example, you open a Customer Card in the RTC and then create a Note for that Customer like this:

But the problem is that these notes created in the Role Tailored Client are not accessible via the Classic Client. So if you are working in Mixed Mode, meaning using the Classic Client and the Role Tailored Client on the same Sql Server database, then notes created via the RTC cannot be displayed in the Classic Client.

How can we make these Notes accessible via the Classic Client?

Well, you are probably thinking, no problem, just create a form around the Notes table and link it to for example the customer card. Well, that's not possible, because there's no Notes table. So the question is where are these Notes stored in the database? After a little research I found that Notes are stored in the Record Link table. This table is used to store Record Links, and now this table has been redesigned to also store Notes:

So, now we know where to find Notes in the database, so now you should be able to also visualize Notes in the Classic Client.

How can you now visualize a Note?

Well, the Note is saved as a BLOB field in the table, so you can for example export it to a Text file and then view it.

Example Form:

And the code behind the View Note button could be this:

 

 

Recently I discovered something very interesting on the Dynamics NAV 2009 Role Tailored Client, more exactly on possible ways to create shortcuts and hyperlinks to start the Role Tailored Client.

When you are debugging pages and/or reports, you usually run them from the command prompt like this:

But you can do the exact same thing from within Internet Explorer by typing the command in the URL bar: "dynamicsnav:////runreport?report=50000"

The following table shows some examples of hyperlinks and provides information about how to specify parameters

So in Internet Explorer you could create a menu containing hyperlinks to launch specific pages, reports or items in the navigation pane.

Just go into Internet Explorer and create a hyperlink like this:

And then you can click on it in your favorites and it will launch the Role Tailored client and the page, report or item in the navigation pane you defined in the hyperlink.

So, this gives us the possibility to create a separate menu in Internet Explorer Favorites containing a kind of Navigation Pane for the Role Tailored client.

Nice isn't it?

Have you ever been in a scenario that you are running Dynamics NAV and an error occurs? Sometimes you may want to have the exact error message in txt format to do some further research, for example in a search engine.

Well, I found out by accident that when you see a dialog box poping up in Dynamics NAV and you select it and do a Copy (CTRL-C), then you can do a Paste (CTRL-V) in a text editor, and voila, the exact error message is now pasted…

For example:

"CTRL-C", "open notepad", "CTRL-V" and this is the result:

Nice, isn't it ?

Sometimes when you are upgrading a Dynamics NAV database towards Dynamics NAV 5 or Dynamics NAV 5 SP1 with the Upgrade Toolkit you might receive this error when executing Task 5: Delete objects of the Upgrade Toolkit:

The issue occurs because the Upgrade Toolkit tries to delete all MenuSuite objects, but your partner license does not have permissions to delete the MBS MenuSuite object.

Possible solutions:

• You can delete all the Objects except for the Objects you do not have permission for manually.
• Alternatively change the code in Codeunit 104002 – "Delete Objects Excl. Tables" to not delete MenuSuite Objects and handle only these Objects manually. This is not difficult, you just have to remove MenuSuite from the Filter of objects to be deleted:
  
  
  Then after you Import the file containing the Dynamics NAV 5 Objects, make sure that you choose "Replace All" in the Import Worksheet.
• The best solution is that you have your license updated. So to resolve this issue, please send a request to Microsoft Business Solutions Licensing Team to update your license file.

When using the Dynamics NAV client to create a backup of a database, you might get into the situation that the backup (.fbk) file that you are creating exceeds 2Gb of data.

Well, in fact this will never happen, because as soon as the .fbk file reaches 2Gb, Dynamics NAV will create an extra .fbk file and continue in that one, until it also reaches 2Gb and then it will create a third file, and so on…

Sometimes this behavior might give an issue…

The name of the extra backup files will contain a number. If you named the backup file backup1.fbk, then the second backup file will be named: backup2.fbk.

The problem occurs when you did not put a number in the name of the backup file AND the path of the folder in which you are storing the backup contains a number. Dynamics NAV will take the name and path of the backup file as a string, and will start searching from right to left for a number to increment. If one is not found then 1 will be added as the number.

So you might get into the situation that you are creating a backup named fin.fbk in a folder called: c:\temp1\fin.fbk. As soon as this backup file becomes greater then 2Gb, Dynamics NAV will try to create an extra backup file like this: c:\temp2\fin.fbk and if the folder c:\temp2 does not exist, an error will occur.

So think about this when you are creating a backup (.fbk) from a big Dynamics NAV database.

Sometimes you need to create a list of all of the fields that were added to a database. A very easy and quick way to do this is by using the Field table.

Example:

Create a new form using the form wizard and put Field as the table.

Select all the fields from the Field table and preview the form.

Now you can set a filter on the FieldNo: 50000..99999.

And voila, these are the fields that were added to the database. Of course you will need to expand the filter for fields added in the add-on range.