Development tutorial link: Extending the Warehouse management functionality after application seal

Background

At the Dynamics 365 for Operations Technical Conference earlier this year, Microsoft announced its plans around overlayering going forward. If you have not heard it yet, here's the tweet I posted on it:

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Ivan Kashperuk @IvanKashperuk

#Dyn365Tech AppSuite will be "soft sealed" in Fall 2017 release and "hard sealed" in Spring 2018 - move to use #Extensions in your solutions

2:25 AM - 14 Mar 2017

 
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However the application SYS code still has a number of areas which are difficult to impossible to customize without overlayering. One of such areas is the Warehouse management area.

Improvements

In the SCM team we have been focusing on improving our Extensibility story in the application, which also includes the above mentioned warehousing area.

Below are a few posts Michael posted recently describing some of the changes we have done in the Warehouse management area, which are now available as part of Microsoft Dynamics for Operations Spring 2017 preview.
This should allow customizing the warehousing functionality to a large degree without the need to overlayer the code.

Extending WHS – Adding a new flow
Extending WHS – Adding a new control type
Extending WHS – Changing behavior of existing control types
Extending WHS – Adding a new custom work type
Extending WHS – Adding a new location directive strategy

Please look through these changes and let us know if YOUR functional enhancements are still impossible, so we can get them addressed.

Thanks

Announcement: Warehouse Mobile Devices Portal improvements with February update of AX 2012 R3

A monthly cadence AX 2012 R3 update for February has just come out on LCS, and with it a few changes our team has done that deal with overall behavior and performance of WMDP - the Warehouse Mobile Devices Portal used in the Advanced warehousing module.

I want to call them out here, and if you are reading my blog to keep up to date with the Warehousing changes, I strongly encourage you to install the below changes:

• A functional enhancement, that allows you to start execution of a work order that has some lines awaiting demand replenishment, processing the lines that can be picked already now
• Can also be downloaded individually as KB3205828
• Make sure to pair it up with KB3209909, if you use the Full button when executing work
• You can read more about the functionality in my earlier blog post: http://kashperuk.blogspot.dk/2016/11/tutorial-link-executing-outbound-work.html
• A performance optimization, that avoids updating certain persisted counters on the wave when work goes through its stages. 
• This also ensures they do not get out of sync, as they were used to make certain decisions about what is allowed for a work order
• Can also be downloaded individually as KB3217157
• An integrity enhancement, that ensures we always are in a valid state in DB, where each service call from WMDP is now executed within a single transaction scope
• Can also be downloaded individually as KB3210293
• Can be turned off in code for a selected WHSWorkExecuteDisplay* class, if needed
• This is a great change ensuring we do not commit any data unless all went well, but might hypothetically impact your new/modified WMDP flows, if you handle your exceptions incorrectly today. If you do find issues with them, please let me know, I am curious to know your specific examples.
• Various minor enhancements, that ensure WMDP performs well under load
• Can also be downloaded individually as KB3210293
• This includes improvements to enable better concurrency in various WMDP scenarios, better error handling on user entry, etc.

Again, install these, try them out, and provide feedback!

There are a lot more enhancements and bug fixes that went into this release, you can read the full list by following the link below:

https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/dynamicsaxse/2017/03/01/february-release-dynamics-ax-2012-r3/

Thanks!

Tool: Dynamics AX 7 browser power & Table browser add-in for Google Chrome

Microsoft Dynamics AX "7" is, as you all know, a Cloud release, which means that the one and only client available for AX "7" is the web browser.

Nowadays browsers are pretty advanced, meaning that you get pretty much the same look and feel, as in a "rich" Win32 client. It has its drawback as well, of course, but we are not here to talk about those.

On the positive side, it now allows for a number of entry points that will take you directly into the flow or form you want to execute, because most of the information about where you want to go is provided through the URL itself.

I have already previously posted about the Warehouse Mobile Devices Portal emulator form and how you can access it. Here it is again:

https://usnconeboxax1aos.cloud.onebox.dynamics.com/?cmp=USMF&mi=action:WHSWorkExecute

You basically specify your Dynamics AX URL, followed by which company you want to connect to, and which menu item to open - in this case, an Action menu item WHSWorkExecute. Easy, right?

Well, you can do the same trick to open other menu items, and that is what this blog post is about - Table Browser.

As some of my old readers know, I'm a big fan. If you are not one of those, and are running previous versions of AX, check out the blog post below, it's awesome!

http://kashperuk.blogspot.dk/2007/09/devsystablebrowser-version-20-is-out.html

Well, Dynamics AX "7" also has a little something to help you browse tables now.
Here is a cool little add-in for Google Chrome, which allows you to open the table browser for a selected table in a selected company (settings are persisted, so you don't need to enter the company name each time):

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ax-table-browser-caller/nahbldacmaibopfiiaoboloegpobpccn

I've just tried it out and it's pretty neat, so take it for a spin and let me know what you think!

To finish off, let's just take a quick look at what the add-in actually does, which is - opens a pre-defined URL similar to WMDP link above:

https://usnconeboxax1aos.cloud.onebox.dynamics.com/?mi=SysTableBrowser&TableName=WHSWorkTable&cmp=USMF&limitednav=true&lng=en-us

We specified that we want to open the Display (which is the default) menu item SysTableBrowser, passed in an argument TableName WHSWorkTable. We also specified the company, as before, as as well the display language. We've also added in the limitednav=true flag, which removes some of the navigation panels and buttons, so you cannot navigate away from this page to another form or menu.

Technical Note. Check out UrlUtility.getQueryParamValue('TableName'); This could potentially be used in some of your customizations