As a Dynamics AX developer, your responsibility is to deliver all kinds of application customizations, whether they are small adjustments or bespoke modules. Dynamics AX is a highly customizable system and requires a significant amount of knowledge and experience to deliver quality solutions. A single goal can be achieved in multiple ways, and there is always a question—which way is the best?
This book takes you through numerous practically proven recipes to help you with the daily development tasks. Each recipe contains detailed step-by-step instructions along with application screenshots and in-depth explanations. The recipes cover multiple Dynamics AX modules, and as a result, the book gives a developer an overview of the functional aspects of the system too.
The book's content is presented in six chapters covering the following areas:
Chapter 1, Processing Data focuses on data manipulation. It explains how to build data queries, how to check and modify existing data, and how to read or write comma-separated and XML files.
Chapter 2, Working with Forms covers the various aspects of using Dynamics AX forms. In this chapter, dialogs and their events are explained. Various useful features like splitters, saving last values, changing form appearance, dynamic controls, and others are also explained.
Chapter 3, Working with Data in Forms basically supplements the previous chapter and explains about data organization in forms. The examples in this chapter include instructions on how to build form data filters, process multiple records at a time, create data wizards, checklists, and the use of colors and images.
Chapter 4, Building Lookups covers all kinds of lookups in the system. The chapter starts with a simple automatically generated lookup, continues with more advanced ones, and finishes with standard Windows lookups like the file selection dialog or the color picker.
Chapter 5, Processing Business Tasks explains the usage of Dynamics AX business logic API. This chapter discusses topics on processing journals, purchase, and sales orders. Other features like posting financial vouchers directly, modifying transaction texts and creating electronic payment formats are included too.
Chapter 6, Integration with Microsoft Office shows how MS Word, Excel, Outlook, and Project can be used with Dynamics AX.
This book is for Dynamics AX developers primarily focused on delivering time-proven application modifications. Although new X++ developers could use this book along with their beginner's guides, this book is more focused on people who are willing to raise their programming skills above the beginner's level and at the same time learn the functional aspects of Dynamics AX. So, some Dynamics AX coding experience is expected.
All the coding examples were done in virtual Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 Image from Microsoft Learning Download Centre. The following list of software from the virtual image was used in this book:
Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition (Service Pack 2)
Dynamics AX 2009 RTM (kernel version: 5.0.593.0, application version: 5.0.593.0)
Microsoft Office Excel 2007
Microsoft Office Word 2007
Microsoft Office Outlook 2007
Microsoft Office Project 2007 (installed manually as an additional component)
Notepad
Internet Explorer 7
The mentioned software does not necessary have to be in a virtual image. The recipes could be implemented in any Dynamics AX 2009 RTM environment with no previous modifications.
Although all recipes were tested on the mentioned software, they might work on older or newer software versions without any implications or with minor code adjustments.
In this book, you will find a number of styles of text that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles, and an explanation of their meaning.
Code words in text are shown as follows: "We call the table's renamePrimaryKey(), which does the actual renaming."
A block of code will be set as follows:
numRef.DataTypeId = typeId2ExtendedTypeId(typeid(EmplId));
numRef.ReferenceHelp = literalstr("Employee identification");
numRef.WizardContinuous = false;
numRef.WizardManual = NoYes::No;
numRef.WizardAllowChangeDown = NoYes::Yes;When we wish to draw your attention to a particular part of a code block, the relevant lines or items will be shown in bold:
public server static NumberSequenceReference numRefEmplId()
{
return NumberSeqReference::findReference(
typeid2extendedtypeid(typeid(EmplId)));
}The code in this book generally follows the best practice guidelines provided by Microsoft, but there are some exceptions:
No text labels were used to make the code clear.
No three letter codes in front of each new AOT object were used.
No configuration or security keys were used.
Object properties that are not relevant to the topic being discussed are not set.
Some other considerations:
Each recipe demonstrates the principle and is not a complete solution.
The assumption is that no other modifications are present in the system.
The code might not have all possible validations that are not relevant to the principle being explained.
To demonstrate the principle and simplify the demonstration, the code in some recipes is placed in a job or in the
main()of a newly created class to make sure it can be executed from AOT.The code might have more variables than required to make sure it is clear for all audiences.
Sometimes unnecessary code wrapping is used to make sure the code fits into the page width of this book and is easily readable.
New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, in menus or dialog boxes for example, appear in our text like this: "Click Transactions to note the existing transactions:"
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Visit http://www.packtpub.com/files/code/9423_Code.zip to directly download the example code.
The downloadable files contain instructions on how to use them.
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