Book Image

Extending Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Operations Cookbook

By : Simon Buxton
Book Image

Extending Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Operations Cookbook

By: Simon Buxton

Overview of this book

Dynamics 365 for Operations is the ERP element of Microsoft’s new Dynamics 365 Enterprise Edition. Operations delivers the infrastructure to allow businesses to achieve growth and make better decisions using scalable and contemporary ERP system tools. This book provides a collection of “recipes” to instruct you on how to create—and extend—a real-world solution using Operations. All key aspects of the new release are covered, and insights into the development language, structure, and tools are discussed in detail. New concepts and patterns that are pivotal to elegant solution designs are introduced and explained, and readers will learn how to extend various aspects of the system to enhance both the usability and capabilities of Operations. Together, this gives the reader important context regarding the new concepts and the confidence to reuse in their own solution designs. This “cookbook” provides the ingredients and methods needed to maximize the efficiency of your business management using the latest in ERP software—Dynamics 365 for Operations.

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Table of Contents (16 chapters)
Preface
Preface
What this book covers
What you need for this book
Who this book is for
Sections
Conventions
Reader feedback
Customer support
Free Chapter
1
Starting a New Project
Starting a New Project
Introduction
Creating the Visual Studio Team Services project
Connecting Visual Studio to Visual Studio Team Services
Creating a new Model and Packages
Configuring project and build options
Creating a Label file
2
Data Structures
Data Structures
Introduction
Creating enumerated types
Creating extended data types
Creating setup tables
Creating a parameter table
Creating main data tables
Creating order header tables
Creating order line tables
3
Creating the User Interface
Creating the User Interface
Introduction
Creating the menu structure
Creating a parameter form
Creating menu items
Creating setup forms
Creating details master (main table) forms
Creating a details transaction (order entry) form
Creating form parts
Create tiles with counters for the workspace
Creating a workspace
4
Application Extensibility, Form Code-Behind, and Frameworks
Application Extensibility, Form Code-Behind, and Frameworks
Introduction
Creating a handler class using the Application Extension factory
Hooking up a number sequence
Creating a create dialog for details transaction forms
Creating a SysOperation process
Adding an interface to the SysOperation framework
5
Business Intelligence
Business Intelligence
Introduction
Creating aggregate dimensions
Creating aggregate measures
Creating aggregate data entities
Creating and using key performance indicators
6
Security
Security
Introduction
Creating privileges
Creating duties
Creating security roles
Creating policies
7
Leveraging Extensibility
Leveraging Extensibility
Introduction
Extending standard tables without customization footprint
Creating data-event handler methods
How to customize a document layout without an over-layer
Creating event handler methods
Extending standard forms without customization footprint
Using a form event handler to replace a lookup
Creating your own query functions
8
Data Management, OData, and Office
Data Management, OData, and Office
Introduction
Creating a data entity
Extending standard data entities
Importing data through Data Import/Export Framework
Reading, writing, and updating data through OData
9
Consuming and Exposing Services
Consuming and Exposing Services
Introduction
Creating a service
Consuming a Dynamics 365 for Operations SOAP service
Consuming a Dynamics 365 for Operations JSON service
Consuming an external service within Dynamics 365 for Operations
10
Extensibility Through Metadata and Data Date-Effectiveness
Extensibility Through Metadata and Data Date-Effectiveness
Introduction
Using metadata for data access
Using Interfaces for extensibility through metadata
Making data date-effective
11
Unit Testing
Unit Testing
Introduction
Creating a Form Adaptor project
Creating a Unit Test project
Creating a Unit Test case for code
Creating a test case from a task recording
12
Automated Build Management
Automated Build Management
Introduction
Creating a Team Services Build Agent Queue
Setting up a build server
Managing build operations
Releasing a build to User Acceptance Testing
13
Servicing Your Environment
Servicing Your Environment
Introduction
Applying metadata fixes
Applying binary updates
Servicing the build server
Servicing the Sandbox - Standard Acceptance Test environment
14
Workflow Development
Workflow Development
Introduction
Creating a workflow type
Creating a workflow approval
Creating a manual workflow task
Hooking up a workflow to the user interface
Creating a sample workflow design
15
State Machines
State Machines
Introduction
Creating a state machine
Creating a state machine handler class
Using menu items to control a state machine
Hooking up the state machine to a workflow

Creating a Label file

Most projects have some kind of user interface, and therefore we need to display text to the user other than the field names. The best practice method to do this is to use a label file. The label file contains a language specific dictionary of label IDs and the translation.

Standard elements tend to have the legacy label IDs of an @ symbol, followed by a three-digit label ID and a number. This format worked well for the past 15 years, but the prefix was potentially limiting, especially to aid ISVs. Labels are no longer restricted to three digits, which helps Microsoft attain one of its goals of making ISV add-ons easier to write, maintain and adopt.

The choice of how many and which packages need a label file depends on the solution design.

It isn't a terrible idea for an end user customer solution to have one package just for labels that are re-used by each package. This does mean that we run the risk of using a label out of context. You may choose to use a standard label for Name on personal record, only for the label to be changed by the original developer to something specific to the original context, for example, Product name.

We tend to create a label file for each package as this ensures that the package can correct and change labels without worrying about regression in other Models.

Getting ready

To get started, open Visual Studio, and the project in question, in my case I will continue with the ConWHSGeneralExtensions project.

How to do it...

To create the label file, follow these steps:

  1. Right-click on the project and select Add | New item... or use the keyboard shortcut, Ctrl + Shift + A.
  2. Choose Labels and Resources from the Operations Artifacts list.
  3. From the list on the left, select Label File.
  4. In the Name field, enter a short, but unique label name, in my case ConWHS. I want it to be as short as possible, but be completely sure it will be globally unique, regardless of any future add-on we may choose to install.
  5. Press Add.
  6. In the Label file wizard, leave Label file ID as default.
It seems that we can specify a different name in this step, but the previous only called this wizard with a suggested file name. The Label file ID field contains both the ID and the file name that will be created.
  1. Press Next.
  2. In the language selection, move the languages from the left-hand list into the right-hand list using the buttons. Only leave languages selected that you will maintain. This involves creating a label in each language file.
This also applies to language with subtle differences, such as English and Spanish. Even though the label will often be the same, we still need to manually maintain each language file. Currently this also means we have to be careful to ensure we give them the correct ID.
  1. Press Next.
  2. Check that the Summary page is correct, and press Finish.

How it works...

The creation is straightforward. The process creates a text file on the disk that contains a tab-separated list of label IDs and translations.

When a label is selected against a control, it will be given a label file ID that ensures it is unique. In our example, the label file ID was ConWHS. As we create a label, it will be given the IDs in the sequence @ConWHS:ConWHS1, @ConWHS:ConWHS2, and so on.

In our example, the label IDs given to the control will be @ConWHS:ConWHS1. This seems needlessly long. Since, we can actually specify the label ID manually, we can choose to enter a shorter ID per label, generating a label such as @ConWHS:L001, or enter a memorable name as an ID, where the ID would then become @ConWHS:ItemNotExists.

There's more...

Currently, the maintenance of labels can be time consuming, in that, we do not have a translation list per label ID as we did in Dynamics AX 2012, but a separate file per language. This is targeted for improvement, and may change by release. The concept, however, will remain the same.

When writing labels for variants of the same or similar languages, we can copy and paste the labels between files. Expand the label file to the lowest node to the file with a .txt extension, and right click on it to select Open With.... Choose Notepad from the list.

Each label will have two lines, one for the label, and the other for the comment, as shown in the following extract from an en-gb label file:

ConWHS1=Vehicle type 
 ;ConWHS 
ConWHS2=The type of vehicle 
 ;ConWHS 
VehTransComplete=Complete inspection 
 ;ConWHS 
VehTransCompleteHT=Complete, and finalise the vehicle inspection 
 ;ConWHS

You can than translate to the desired language and paste it into the target label file, again by opening the txt file in Notepad. You must do this from within Visual Studio, otherwise the file may not be checked out from source control. Be careful, as it will not validate that there aren't duplicates or file formatting errors.

If you intend to write add-ons, you should always maintain the en-us language file. You will get compilation warnings that the label ID does not exist, if you do not. If you are to release the software to a region with a variant of a language (en-au, en-gb, en-ie, en-us, and so on), please use the correct translation, as not only will it make your add-on more professional and global, but some terms have completely different meanings. For example, stock means inventory in en-gb, but means financial share holdings in en-us.

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