Start Dynamics NAV Windows Client (RTC) from PowerShell

After my sessions during “conference season”, I promised to blog about my scripts. I decided to do this on small pieces of scripts .. and this one is so useful, though I only realised it was useful until I wanted to do a gimmick during a script. I’m actually using it all the time now :-).

In short …

When playing around with PowerShell, you might want to create testing environments and such by very simply:

• Restoring a backup
  
• Create a service tier
  
• Do whatever you want to do with it, for example:
  
  • turn it into a MultiTenant environment
    
  • Use it to upload objects to start solving conflicts of a merge
    
  • …
    

It is just useful to, at the end of your script, start your Windows Client right away, to not loose time in trying to figure out the “connection string” and such.. .

And it’s simple to do so in PowerShell

I’m using the fact that it’s possible to start NAV with a shortcut like “DynamicsNAV://”… . This way, it as easy as opening any URL from PowerShell.

I wrote a small function that covers it .. :

function Start-NAVWindowsClient
{
    [cmdletbinding()]
    param(
        [string]$ServerName, 
        [int]$Port, 
        [String]$ServerInstance, 
        [String]$Companyname, 
        [string]$tenant='default'
        )

    if ([string]::IsNullOrEmpty($Companyname)) {
       $Companyname = (Get-NAVCompany -ServerInstance $ServerInstance -Tenant $tenant)[0].CompanyName
    }

    $ConnectionString = "DynamicsNAV://$Servername" + ":$Port/$ServerInstance/$MainCompany/?tenant=$tenant"
    Write-Verbose "Starting $ConnectionString ..."
    Start-Process $ConnectionString
}

Simply start the “url” with “Start-Process” and off you go.. . 

Enjoy!

Ps, there is even a gimmick within this gimmick: look at the way the company is handled. When there is no provided with the function, the script will try to find the “first” CompanyName by doing this oneliner:

(Get-NAVCompany -ServerInstance $ServerInstance)[0].CompanyName

How cool is that?