Why we love Extender (Part 1) – Using an Extender Form as a Lookup

If you’ve been using Dynamics GP for any length of time, you’ve most likely heard of Extender by eOne Solutions. While Extender has a wealth of utilities that allow you to easily add functionality to Dynamics GP without the use of code, I find that most people I talk to have only ever scratched the surface of what it can really do.

I worked on a project recently where I kept hearing one question as we designed the solution: Extender can do that? Essentially, the customer needed to calculate an overhead on some of their projects. The issue for them was that the project accounting tool in use (WennSoft) could not easily be configured to apply all of their parameters for the calculation of this overhead.

As part of the final solution, users were going to need the ability to look up Cost Codes. While the lookup data type in Extender has lots of standard lookups available, WennSoft Cost Codes isn’t one of them. In the past, a limitation like that would have caused me to move the whole solution out to Dexterity, Excel, or some kind of clever use of Modifier and VBA. We created a lookup for them using an Extender Form.

An Extender Form is a standalone version of the Extender Window that we all know and love. That is, we do not access it from a standard Dynamics GP window, nor is it tied to specific Dynamics GP records. This allows us to add completely new windows to Dynamics GP without the use of code!

Extender Window

From the Extender Objects pane, select Forms. From here you can either click on New or select an existing Form from the Extender Resources Pane and click Open.

Extender Form Maintenance Window

Fill in the Form ID, Form Name, ID Field Prompt and Description Prompt fields. For this project we didn’t need anything else data wise, but notice that we have all the same functionality that we had in Extender Windows. We could add other fields for the users to populate using all the standard Extender data types.

Next, click on Options.

Extender Form Options Window

For our project, we wanted to set 2 particular flags on this window. Because we plan to add data to this form from the standard tables through code (we didn’t want an additional maintenance item), we set the Form to be Read Only. This will allow users to view the form data, but not edit it.

We also click the Add To Lookup List check box, and fill in the Lookup Description field. This will add a lookup to Extender that can be used on other Forms and Windows. The lookup will show the ID Field and Description data, and behave like every other lookup in Dynamics GP.

Click on Save to close the Options window, and then click on Save to save the new Form. If you open up the new form, it will look something like this:

Cost Code Lookup Form

Now, from any other Extender Form or Window, we can add this lookup:

Selecting the Cost Code Lookup

When the user activates the lookup, they won’t know you had anything to do with building it!

Cost Code Lookup – What the user sees

The truth is, even having created the SQL objects to maintain the data, I spent way more time creating this post than I did creating the Extender Lookup in the first place!

Some other great benefits of using Extender for this, as opposed to building a custom solution in some other toolset, include:

• The form will upgrade with Dynamics GP. No extra testing required.
• Deployment is as simple as creating and assigning a Security Task and a Security Role.
• If you are a non-technical person, you can still do this.
• You can go spend time with your new Xbox 1 and then complain to users about how long it took to build the window and they will believe you because of how awesome it looks!

About Briware Solutions

Based in the Greater Toronto Area, Briware Solutions provides enterprise level consulting services to growing companies throughout Ontario.  With a focus on improving the way Dynamics GP fits into business processes, Briware Solutions services customers in multiple industries including television, utilities, manufacturing, and distribution.

www.briwaresolutions.com

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