Dynamics AX 2012 and BarTender Commander

I have previously blogged on the BarTender integration to Dynamics AX 2012.  In this blog post I want to take the integration one step further. 

Sometimes it is not possible to have a BarTender client on each machine.  Also in a Terminal Server scenario often local label printers are mapped into the RDP session, and you suddenly see that you are using up all the printer licenses you have purchased for BarTender.

There is a way around this, and that is to use BarTender Commander instead of the BarTender ActiveX integration. Then the printer, copies and tag values can be sent to a XML file, that the BarTender is picking up, and will automatically print out centrally.

So I needed to create some very small changes to my BarTender module to make this happen.

This will generate a XML file, that looks like this.

The BarTender commander “picks this up”.

And BarTender prints out accordingly.

I also see that some of the users of the BarTender integration is using it in a different way that I expected.  They are using it WITHOUT BarTender, and are just generating the XML messages.   Then they pick up this XML file, and use it for other types of integrations, like EDI and even into a dynamic document composition tools(Like StreamServ).  They then don’t need to spend a lot of time in creating SSRS reports, but more their reporting requirements into a more user-friendly reporting tool.  My comment is WOW…. I didn’t recognize that feature when I created it   Users are really creative and smart.  

In my last blogpost I explained how important if it is to share knowledge.  I follow up on this, and here the actual Dynamics AX 2012 source code for creating BarTender commander XML files. 

(Yes I know that you would prefer a “copy-paste” version, but that would be too easy )

Happy Daxing