Rashed Amini

Dynamics Add-in with WPF

2010-01-05T05:55:19Z

I wrote previously about using WPF textbox for automatic spellchecking. In this blog, I will actually talk about a real WPF Visualization that I have been playing with for a while. I didn’t want to build a visualization from scratch, so I searched for an existing WPF solution with source code that I could use for my Add-in. I found WPF Dynamic Data Display built by Microsoft Research that is used for many solutions. My goal was to display sales data from Dynamics NAV in an interactive map that you...(read more)

Dynamics NAV Addin Example Large Button

2009-12-11T17:57:57Z

Here is another example on how to create custom buttons in NAV and control events when they are pressed. In this example I’m actually using the WinForm Button controls and displaying them on a panel. When the button are pressed Nav code is triggered and you can add your own custom logic in it. Here is a screenshot below. As you can see, there are two button with different sizes and colors and when you press then a nav message is displayed that you pressed it. The code for CreateControl is as follows...(read more)

Backing up/Transfering Company Specific Data through SQL for Dynamics NAV

2009-12-08T13:18:00Z

Dynamics NAV client has a feature to backup and restore company specific. This process creates an (.fbk) file that contains just the data without indexes. The (.fbk) file can be used to restore in another database. For large database this is a slow process, and not feasible to do. In addition Dynamics Developer license has recently changed in that partners no longer can delete standard NAV fields or fields added by Add-ons by an ISV. So if a client wants to remove an Add-on from its database, they...(read more)

Automatic Spell Checker in Dynamics NAV

2009-11-27T09:08:14Z

I saw some post on mibuso about asking for a spellchecker in Dynamics NAV. I thought it would be an interesting project to implement automatic spellchecking in NAV. I decided to implement it using Add-ins. After some googling, I found that I could use MS Office Word interop classes, but as I started implementing it, I found out that it does do real-time automatic spellchecking on a textbox. The user would have to click on a button and then the code would spell check the textbox. I kept searching...(read more)

Replacing NAS with SQL Jobs and NAV Web service

2009-11-14T23:00:28Z

Many companies, running Dynamics NAV, use NAS (Navision Application Server) to automate certain processes. Some companies use NAS to schedule to run many jobs at night. Others use it for integration where NAS periodically, using timer automation, checks a folder to process certain files throughout the day. Others use NAS to monitor message queue, (MSMQUEUE), for integration with web or 3rd party system. The solution I will be describing here can replace NAS in the first two scenarios. Scheduling...(read more)

Dynamics NAV 2009 Sp1 Client Add-ins

2009-11-09T20:46:43Z

When Service Pack 1 was released for Dynamics NAV, it introduced a new feature: Add-ins. I had read the walk-through and was thinking of something useful to build that would utilize the Add-ins feature. Last week a salesperson emailed me and asked me if anybody had migrated the Graphical Process Flow Chart Tool that Microsoft had released. Here is the URL . I imported the fob and loaded the objects into a 5.0 database and looked at how the demo was built. The Visio diagrams are saved as pictures...(read more)

Inventory Valuation in Dynamics NAV

2009-07-04T17:59:47Z

One of the issues customers run into as their database gets bigger and bigger is that their reports take longer and longer to run. One of those reports is the Inventory Valuation report. I’ve always suggested customers to look at SQL reporting services to write these reports. Inventory valuation report is a little complex, mainly because it can be run as of date. A user can run the report today and enter a date a month ago and find out what the value of his or her inventory was at that date...(read more)

Bing and Dynamics NAV

2009-06-15T02:35:26Z

As some of you know MS has released new and rebranded search engine Bing. I really like their instant video search. The search results were pretty good. I search for VARIABLEACTIVE, and it showed MSDN documentation and that it no longer is supported in NAV 2009. Google displayed also Mibuso thread that was a few days old. Searching for VARIABLEACTIVE mibuso showed the thread but would take me to the list of threads and not to the actual thread posting. I tried to search for Dynamics and Bing automatically...(read more)

Faxing Reports from Dynamics NAV

2009-06-14T12:48:38Z

I saw some question on mibuso forum on how to fax from Navision. This blog is about how to fax from Navision. This is method uses Microsoft Fax Services. You can use this to fax invoices etc to customers that prefer to receive Invoices by Fax. By default it is not installed and you need to install it. To install Fax Services, you need to open control Panel. Click on Add remove programs and click on Add/Remove Windows Components. Then tick Fax Services and click OK. It may ask for windows CD to install...(read more)

Dynamics Nav 2009 Sp1

2009-06-12T17:05:42Z

I recently downloaded the CTP 2 for NAV 2009 NA version. There have many blogs on new features added. I wanted to talk about some of development changes. First change is that DBCS (Double Byte Character Set) is no longer part of fin.stx but rather part of the database setting. The Validate CodePage has been changed to Validate Collation and you can uncheck it to enable DBCS. Another feature added is that when you compile multiple objects, if there are any errors in previous version it would mark...(read more)

Encrypting Data in NAV using SQL with ADO

2009-05-20T16:57:41Z

A lot of Dynamics NAV databases carry sensitive information that by law in some countries need to be encrypted. For example credit card number or social security number. There are many solutions available. The following solution utilizes SQL Server 2005 and SQL Server 2008 provided encryption feature. There are two kinds of keys used in encryption: Symmetric Key, Asymmetric Key. In my example I will be using Symmetric Key. SQL provides many algorithms to encrypt data. The supported algorithms are...(read more)

Web service Proxy for NAV Web service

2009-05-03T23:16:26Z

As many of you know Dynamics NAV 2009 is using windows authentication to allow any web services to be consumed. Currently Nav 2009 when it negotiates to negotiate it only uses Kerberos and doesn’t fall back on NTML. This creates connection issues with Non Windows systems. For example Java based system (SOAPUI), or php based website running on Linux servers. To solve this problem you have to write a web service wrapper that allows you to bypass this problem. In this blob I will go through the...(read more)

The Green Initiative - NAV Address Verification

2009-02-19T02:20:32Z

I saw this video on Dynamics AX on channel9 . They are talking about a new feature they’ve added to Dynamics AX that allows you to measure a company’s carbon footprint. I thought that in order to use this in NAV, it has to come by default with the product. For an ISV to build it and maintain it adds cost upgrades and future maintenance, and clients will not voluntarily purchase it, so that they can enter more data as they run their daily transactions. I thought of other ways that I could...(read more)

SQL 2008 Compression on NAV Database

2009-02-17T02:41:08Z

SQL Server 2008 has introduced a couple of new features. The feature that interested me most is filtered indexes and compression. In this blog I will talk about my experience with compression. I deal on daily basis with many clients. So I keep a copy of their database on my local pc. As most of you know NAV databases can grow pretty quickly. And keeping all these copies becomes a challenge. I decided to test compression on a 22 gig database. I used the following query to compress all the tables and...(read more)

Running Job Queue through NAV Web service for Unlimited Companies

2009-01-28T06:52:23Z

I had posted on mibuso a while back on how to use two NAS instances to run job queue for unlimited amount of companies. Here is the link http://www.mibuso.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=22633 . You had to purchase an additional NAS user license in order to use it. Dynamics NAV 2009 comes with web service, and you can publish any Code unit or Page by default. You will need to purchase one user but for webservice, but it much cheaper. In this blog, I will show you how to setup JOB QUEUE to schedule...(read more)

Upgrading from 5.0 to 2009

2009-01-27T17:50:19Z

I have heard a lot of different things about upgrading to 2009. A lot of customers are unclear on 2009 and how the upgrade is going to work. I wanted to share my experience with an upgrade from 5.0 to 2009 classic. Two of weeks ago I had been scheduled to go onsite for a client to upgrade them from 5.0 to sp1, after arriving and explaining to them the changes to 2009 and that it was released already. I recommended to them to merge the modified objects and upgrade to 2009 directly. 2009 is simply...(read more)