Microsoft is known for renaming products. What do marketing and product management think or want to achieve? Who knows it. It has been confusing customers since many years, also anyone who deals with MS products. At some point they will rename Windows or Word or Excel.

Microsoft CRM, i.e. Customer Relationship Management from MS: It was known by that name for a long time. You knew what that was. What happened to it? First it was renamed to Dynamics CRM, because the MS products are SO dynamically … whatever that means. But that was kind of ok. Then… to Dynamics 365? Yes and no. The term is used for everything, including ERP products. Actually it is the name for the “product family” as MS calls it. CRM became D365 Sales, D365 Marketing, D365 Customer Service (CS), all CRM systems with different feature weightings.

Now there is also the so-called “Customer Engagement” or CE for short. What is that? A mixture of D365 Sales, D365 Marketing, D365 Customer Service, AI stuff, etc. So a mishmash that can do everything, more or less. The jack-of-all-trades, just think of Sharepoint. That’s something like that too. Somehow anything can happen and nothing will happen. But again, that’s what you need. Why all this? To compete with Salesforce. Does it work? Who knows.

Addition: The ERP products are D365 Business Central (formerly Navision or Dynamics Nav), D365 Finance & Operations (formerly Axapta, Dynamics AX). The latter is available in 2 versions: D365 Finance and D365 SCM … and 2 other versions. Why multiple ERP products? No idea. There are also more, there is Great Planes (GP) too. But that has already been abandoned. Well, SAP also has several ERP systems running. So whatever.

If you would like to find out more about it, just get in touch.

#d365ce, #d365cs, #d365bc, #d365fo, #d365scm, #d365, #dynamics365, #businesscentral, #navision, #crm, #microsoft, #customerengagement, #kalchmair, #erp

https://dfk-consult.at/2023/07/30/erp-gesucht-das-unbekannte-business-central-von-microsoft/

since a couple of years i work as freelance consultant, in the bc/nav area as well as business analyst and project manager.

If you are looking for support, want to implement bc, have issues with your bc or nav system or you are not satisfied with your current partner, feel free to contact me.

I provide consulting for Business Central and Navision. That contains business analysis, project management, license management, data migration, trainings, coding, reports.

Other services are business analysis and project management for every kind of software project as well as software evaluation.

As you may know i was an active member of the nav/bc community for many years, helped thousands to solve there issues. I do also have many years of project experience in various branches.

My company homepage: dfk-consult.at

So, you are welcome to contact me via

freelancermap, my homepage, mail

Dipl.Ing. Franz Kalchmair

ERP consultant, Business Analyst, Project Manager
Problem solver, Former MVP

Austria

I researched for a solution in Business Central, but did not find any solution, especially when using a word report. But i found my own way, as always.

For that follow these steps:

1) Copy the standard sales quote report, also the layout to a new custom report, set new object id (e.g. 50100) and name (e.g. “Custom Sales Quote”), so that you can make the needed changes. save, compile, publish the extension. for that steps follow my last post.

2) add variable TenantMedia: record “Tenant Media” to the global report variables

3) add new dataitem(Item;Item) after the last column of dataitem “Line” (Sales Line)

4) add the typical properties to connect the dataitems Line and Item via field “No.”

5) add column(Picture;TenantMedia.Content) to the new dataitem for viewing the item picture in the line

6) in trigger OnAfterGetrecord of dataitem “Line” add new local variable “Item: record item”.
at the end of the trigger’s code add:
item.get(“no.”)
if item.picture.count > 0 then begin
TenantMedia.get(Item.picture.item(1));
TenantMedia.CalcFields(Content);
end;

remark: to load the picture data within the OnAfterGetrecord trigger in new dataitem “Item” won’t work, the data is loaded to late to be shown in the line.

7) edit the word layout in vs-code using ms word, activate the developer tools menu in word, activate the xml structure to view the fields structure

8) add new column in the lines matrix. set the column heading to “Picture”, set the cursor into the new data cell in the new column, add new field Header/Line/Item/Picture as Picture (type) into the new data cell. save the word report, close word, compile and publish the extension. replace the sales quote no. in “report selection” to the new report.

Result:

Great, isn’t it?

To add new fields, additional code, following has to be done: Copy the existing Standard report, create a new report extension and add the dataitem and the code to the extension by using the “AL Object Designer” in Visual Studio Code.

For version 15 or newer:

• Start with a new extension in BC
• Install or use installed “AL Object Designer”
• Download symbols from a sandbox
• Open the “AL Object Designer”: type “AL Object Designer” in the search box.
• Search for the report, click on the report name. A new tab will be opened, the code incl. dataitem of the report is then shown.
• Copy the code to the new .al file, change ID and name. Make then the needed changes, add fields and code, what ever, save.
• Upload and publish the extension to the sandbox.
• Goto “Report layouts/Custom layouts”, download the original layout and upload it to the new report, press update layout.
• Download the report layout from the new report, change the layout according to your needs, add e.g. the new fields.
• Upload the changed report layout, select the new report in report selections and use it, where needed.  

For older Releases do the following: Install a local version of BC on your laptop or use a docker container for that. Export the report object using finsql as .txt file. Then convert it to AL code using the Txt2Al conversion tool.

 procedure ConvertStringToCharArray(var arr: array[10] of char; srcStr: Text) var   i: Integer; begin   for i := 1 to strlen(srcStr) do     arr[i] := srcStr[i]; end;

or simply convert a String Element into a char value.

srcStr: Text;chVal: char// get 1. element of the string and convert it to a charchVal := srcStr[1]; .

begin  hexStr := 'A2F'; // int value = 2607  intVal := HexToInt(hexStr);  Message(hexStr + ' = ' + format(intVal));end;procedure HexToInt(hexStr: Text): Integervar  len, base, decVal, i, j : Integer;begin  base := 1;  decVal := 0;  len := strlen(hexStr);  for i := 0 to len - 1 do beginj := len - i;if (hexStr[j] >= '0') and (hexStr[j] <= '9') then begin  decVal += (hexStr[j] - 48) * base;  base := base * 16;end else if (hexStr[j] >= 'A') and (hexStr[j] <= 'F') then begin  decVal += (hexStr[j] - 55) * base;  base := base * 16;end;  end;  exit(decVal);end;

You can use report “Create recurring Sales Invoice” to generate sales invoices with the needed lines manually. The parameters “Order Date” and “Posting Date” in the request page are mandatory. So, the report cannot be used to generate invoices automatically without setting the mandatory parameters.

But one step after the other.
First goto “Recurring sales lines” and create a new record, set code and description and add a line with the item, which should be added in the sales invoice, when a new sales invoice will be created.

Next open the customer, for which the sales invoices with recurring lines should be created for. There goto Navigate/Sales/”Recurring sales lines” and add a new record with code “LIC”. Set additional values if needed.
Now, if a new sales invoice with that customer is created, the recurring lines are added automatically. That’s fine.

Next run report 172 “Create recurring sales invoices” to create sales invoices with recurring lines, semi-automatically. In the Request page set “customer no.” with the customer’s no. from above, also set the Code from the “Recurring sales lines”.

Fields “Order Date” and “Posting Date” are mandatory to run the report. Therefore it cannot run automatically without setting both date fields.

What to do now?
To run the report automatically e.g. monthly, the best choice is using a job queue entry. There the request page default values can be set. Set the filter fields like above, additional you could set a default value for the date fields. Doing that, the job queue entry can be run with no problem, but all invoices get then the default date value, what we do not want. It would be nice, if the current date is used.
To solve that  it could be an option to extend table “Standard Customer Sales Code”, if there would be a kind of “OnBeforeCreateSalesInvoice” event to replace the dates, but there isn’t.

So i decided to create a copy of report 172 and make one change.

trigger OnPreReport()  begin  //-  if (CurrentClientType = ClientType::Background) or (CurrentClientType = ClientType::NAS) then begin    OrderDate := Today;    PostingDate := Today;  end;   //+   if (OrderDate = 0D) or (PostingDate = 0D) then     Error(MissingDatesErr);end;

Today i watched a live web session about BC Cloud Update strategies. The participants had the option to ask questions, which were answered immediatly.

One of the most asked questions was: How can companies get access to BC Cloud in non supported countries? The answers were in my opinion not really satisfying, because the answer was simply “Not now, maybe in the future….”. UK is supported, but not Ireland, the neighbor country, means North Ireland is, Republic Ireland is not. The Microsoft Headquarter Europe is settled in Dublin, Republic Ireland. Bit strange. Microsoft adds new countries over the time. Support for India is planned, but with no details about the release date. Till then indian companies can use ITAX.

So what can companies and CSPs/ASPs do now, to provide BC Cloud or kind of … ?

• There are workarounds to create tenants for any country. You can get a W1 tenant (no localisation).
  • “How to create a demo account for any country version of Business Central“
  • “How to try Dynamics 365 Business Central from non-supported countries“
• To get a full featured cloud based BC a strategy is to provide BC On-premise in an Azure Cloud virtual server with Azure Active Directory or as a hosted service in a nationwide accessible datacenter. Also small private clouds are possible as environment.
  The CSP/ASP has then the responsibility to provide different releases and care for updates. That is much work, but why not. Otherwise many companies get lost to other Cloud based ERP systems.

Current Availability for BC Cloud:

Development of custom localisations

this is a so called race condition, means two persons want to change the same record or the value of the same field. at the time were the second person, who edited the record, wants to save his changes, the system realizes, that the status of the loaded record is old, because the first person has already saved his changes.

the question was: how to lock the sales order, when one user edits the record, so that a 2. user cannot edit the record.

how to solve the problem:

• the process answer: i most cases that should not be an issue, because only one user should work with one record at a time, e.g. one sales order. it makes no sense that 2 persons work at the same time with the same order. if that occurs, the work process in the company needs some optimization. So some consultancy is needed.
  • situation 1: 2 persons do different things with the same order. In that case a workflow has to be defined, so that person 1 does his work first, then in step 2 person 2 his work step. result: never work 2 persons at the same time with the same order.
  • situation 2: both do the same. then it’s needed to set the field assigned user, so that each person can filter the sales order list by that field and get so the assigned work load. as a result there is never a situation, where 2 persons work with the same order.
•  tech answer: the issue is also solvable technically, but i recommend the process change.
  • table sales header: add 2 fields InUse – boolean, UsedBy – code.20
  • page 42 sales order, add following code to
    trigger OnQueryClosePage
    …
    IF UsedBy = USERID THEN BEGIN
    UsedBy := ”;
    InUse := FALSE;
    modify;

    END;

    trigger OnAfterGetCurrRecord()
    IF NOT InUse THEN BEGIN

    InUse := TRUE;
    UsedBy := USERID;
    modify;

    END ELSE

    IF UsedBy <> USERID THEN
    ERROR(‘in use by %1’, UsedBy);

cheers

ich beschäftige mich aktuell mit Workflows in Dynamics Nav.
Ich bin seit vielen Jahren Senior Consultant für Dynamics Nav und hatte keinen einzigen Kunden, der das Workflow Modul im Einsatz hat, was schade ist, weil das Modul durchaus was kann. Gestern ist mir jedoch klar geworden, dass man keine Genehmigungsrollen in einem Workflow benutzen, nur mit spezifischen Benutzern arbeiten kann. Tasks von einer Rolle zu einer anderen Rolle weiterzuleiten ist aber ein typisches Thema in Workflowszenarien, etwa beim Eingangsrechnungsworkflow.

Dazu ein paar Fragen:
* Lässt sich das Thema Genehmigungsrolle mit dem Standard Nav Workflow umsetzen bzw. gibt es dafür entsprechende Erweiterungen von Drittherstellern?
* Welche konkreten, typischen Anforderungen haben die Kunden, die das Workflow Modul benutzen? Mussten hier Anpassungen vorgenommen werden oder reichten die Features des Standard Nav Workflow Moduls?

Würde mich über Feedback freuen.

beste Grüße
Dipl.Ing. Franz Kalchmair

Uniconta is a new cloud based ERP System. At first view some nice features, quite cheap, very fast, but lacks in some kind in the areas configuration, usability and business logic. It’s quite hard to customize it in that way we know it from NAV. It’s easy to add fields in tables, but not easy to add a button with it’s on functionality. It’s not possible too change existing code, e.g. the posting routines like in Nav often done.

Examples:

• Often needed information is not available on the current point, e.g. item ledger entries (i.e. inventory posting entries in uniconta) are not available in the shipment list.
• Shipment can be created from an order multiple times without changing anything in the system except that there is a new shipment in the list. That’s really disturbing.
• Creating a shipment does not reduce the item stock. That’s also really disturbing.
• To post an order only for delivering, but without invoicing was really hard to find out, how this simple basic erp process works in uniconta. that after some needed configuration (sales preferences, activating of some inventory module features) the item quantity of the sales line is removed from stock immediatly when you set up the quantity in the sales line and not after posting, is quite strange. seems that this is a kind of reservation. is this a well considered erp process? not sure …

I tested a lot, found a huge number of programming/logic/translation failures and irritating and/or not translated error messages (some of them are like “error has occured”), wrote a lot, lot mails to the austrian support. It’s tedious … Nevertheless, maybe i will continue, will see, if i have the time …

In the end, who knows, maybe it will be developed into the right direction. Hopefully the bugs will be fixed and the usability & the business logic will be better.

For more details see:

• Uniconta Startpage
• Uniconta Webclient
• Unipedia: Help pages
• Uniconta User Forum, which i started

cheers

so what is the point? a bit surprisingly many sessions were a kind of a marketing show from and for ISVs and/or partners. this can be interesting, if someone has a special interest in the products of the ISV, for sales people, but it’s not really interesting for the public, for techies, for people who are interested in news about BC in general.

or … power bi is a quite interesting tool and it’s nice, that someone can make basic analysis reporting for BC data, but it’s not specific BC. what i saw, there was no session for “BC in the deep”, what are the features in detail, what can be done with BC and what not. there was only the starting session about BC, a very quick, facile overview, no news. the speaker spoke very quiet, a sleeping pill, so the first impession was not so good.

questions like “is a web based client a solution for everyone or not?” were not discussed, should have been. what about the current/future direction of BC, is it stable now or will we have extensions 3.0 in one year and every ISV has to update their addons? will customizations be stable with BC upgrades or not? these are important questions. there was no session about these topics and no tech session, especially a session about standard reporting in BC would have been interesting. the session about bio diesel was quite ok, it showed a successful BC project with quite complicated processes, which were handled as it should be. it was not really great, normal project work, but it showed, that BC projects can be done like NAV projects.

one exception: the last session i visited was the session of eva dupont, microsft team lead for help/documentation. one word: chapeau!
only 4 people visited the session, what a shame.
mrs. dupont told the history of nav/bc documentation from the beginning, what were the changes, what is now, how can partners/customers use and modify it for their own purposes. all presented with a humour, intelligence and competence of that kind, which are very, very rare. i was fascinated and excited. as always these kind of flowers are not cherished that way it should be.

at last, during one coffee break, i sat in the rest room with my coffee, thinking about whats going on here, suddenly a strange person came to me, sat down, and asked me why i sit here alone and do not talk to others and some more pushy questions. and this person was much too narrow too me. what the hell?! is that the american way to contact a strange person? this was very rude! i can’t stand that at all! we are here in europe, not in the states. this is not the manner how we contact strange persons here! for sure, that is one of the reasons, why the dynamics communities do not work in europe. first of all: keep distance!

so, that was it, this was also my last summit or that kind of event. that’s not that kind of events i like, it costs money, it’s time and power consuming. and in the end, not sure, what it brings. i will also reduce, maybe stop my community activities. spent over the last 5 years huge amount of my spare time, will do other things, which make more sense for me.