Dynamics 365 FO / AX - thoughts on application development and customizations

Preamble: This occurred running on Finance and Operations (Dynamics 365) - (Platform Update57) 7.0.6861.86 extension for Visual Studio. Historically the x++ langauge has not had great support for access modifiers. The original workings was, that all class members in a class were private, and could not be accessed, by code outside the class, unless ofcourse you made a (parm) method giving access to change or just get something. Methods could have access modifiers but they were seldom used and were always public, unless you explicitly wrote something else. Somewhere a long the lines in D365 x++ has evolved to be more c#-like and therefor you can now put access modifiers on you class members, so that if you declare a class member public, you do not actually need to write an access (parm) method. However, the x++ compiler has it's quirks it seems. Consider this class declaration: internal final class MOLSOPackingSlipFromReceivedTransitGoodsUpdater {    ...

 Working in the WHS module a customer needed to be able to change the transport provider (carrier) and the provided service (carrier service) directly on the Shipment chosen in the pack form. This presents some interesting challenges, working within the limits of the extension mechanisms in D365. Firstly as of time of writing the application implements a table relation on the WHSShipment table to the table TMSCarrierService (transport service codes provided by a carrier). It does so by having a Normal field relation between TMSCarrierService.CarrierServiceCode and WHSShipmenttable.CarrierServiceCode, thus NOT taking in to consideration the Carrier that have been chosen on the shipment. Trouble is that you can not change a table relation using extensions, AND you can not using extensions to introduce a new (correct) relation that overrides the existing one. So instead of just changing the table relation (if that was possible and simple), I needed to do 4 extensions. 1) A new class w...

" When ISV solutions are installed as binary only, the current development tools does not support displaying delegate methods, and there are no interaction to copy the enventhandler method. Please add the Option to see the class in design view and from here se and copy event handler methods, Or display them directly from the Application explorer and make the interaction here. " Please vote: https://experience.dynamics.com/ideas/idea/?ideaid=a5d9dd10-a651-ec11-a3ee-0003ff459fb2

I was tasked with developing a custom "process" for printing ad hoc labels in the Dynamics 365SCM WHS app. WHS process guide - development docs Reading the great articles from 1clickfactory (starting point  https://www.1clickfactory.com/blog/advanced-whs-mobile-device-development-part-1-process-guide-framework/) gives a good starting point. Especially Edgaras' tip on running  SysExtensionCache::clearAllScopes();  in a runnable class after introducing a new step/pagebuilder class combination  is VERY useful. And of course Microsoft's own documentation ( https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/supply-chain/warehousing/process-guide-framework ) also helps. However, I wanted to chip in with a couple of things. Extending WHS base enums If you extend the WHSActivity, WHSWorkExecuteMode or WHSWorktransType base enums with new options it is a good idea to run a database synchronization when you are done with extending them. Otherwise you might be frustrated to find, th...

Supressing the infolog is often useful in D365FO when augmenting code. When augmenting code using COC (Chain Of Command), you can have new code run either before or after the code you are augmenting. This means that any infolog-messages that the standard application code does, will be shown to the user, even if your augmentation supports a scenario where there must be no infolog-messages. How do you avoid the standard application infolog-messages ? To the rescue comes temporary supression of the infolog. The suppression consists of: 1) Saving the current infologLevel 2) Setting the infologLevel to SysInfologLevel::None 3) Run your code 4) Restoring the saved infologLevel to the infolog For example a table could have a validatewrite-method that validates that you are only allowed to use 3 out of 6 options in an enum-field, and you need to allow for a fourth one. Table a - validateWrite method: boolean validateWrite() {     Switch (this.enumField)     {     ...

 Note to self. Be careful of creating extensions to a table, that contains no augmentation. I experience problems when opening the Released Products Forms on my developer box. I got a run-time error " Object reference not set to an instance of an object"  when opening the form. The error also occurred when changing records in the form, BUT strangely enough ONLY the first time the cursor arrived a at record. The second there was no problem.  Researching a bit with the debugger, I could see that the error occurred at the super() call in the FormRun class, and in the active method on the EcoResProduct datasource. I discovered that I by accident had created an extension to the table EcoResProduct that contained NO augmentation what so ever. Double checking that the extension had not been checked in to azure DEVOPS, and that the xml-file for the table extension in  K:\AosService\PackagesLocalDirectory\xxxxxDev\xxxxxDev\AxTableExtension contained no augmentation, I deleted...

WHY oh WHY, does the developer-box not tell you, that you can not use custom code in an SSRS-report ? Working with a SSRS-report on Dynamics 365 FO, I came across the following annoyance, with Microsofts setup virtual boxes in Azure. I was working with getting the report to present the filters and chosen parameters from the report dialog that the user is running the report with. At some stage, I thought making a function with custom code in the report properties, was the way to go, but I abandoned that approach in favour of another - AND forgot all about the code. This meant that the custom coded was checked into dev.azure.com, and included in the build on the build box. So I got the deployable package and uploaded it into asset library in LCS, and applied to the SAT-environment. No worries. Right until the users started tested the report in the SAT-environment, because they got: So this meant going back to the dev-box, cleaning out the custom code, doing the building and appl...