Dialog on Sales Release

Seraph

Hello everyone,

I've lurked these forums for a while, but I can't seem to find an answer for my problem. My largest problem is the fact that my company does not have a designers license, so I cannot write any C/AL code. Besides that I can still create forms etc.

My project is to simply make a dialog box pop up when someone releases a sales order. The dialog box merely states "Are you sure you did this, this and this?" "Yes" "No". Upon "Yes" it releases the sales order, "No" just closes. Again, since I can't edit any code I've tried to find a work around of making a form to do that exact function. I've had no problem until now, when you hit "Yes" to release the sales order it tells me "The codeunit Release Sales Document must be called with a Sales Header record."

Is there a way that I can do that in my form? Or is this simply impossible without being able to write any code?

Thank you for your help in advance.
-Seraph

nunomaia

you need C/AL .....

themave

I am in the same position as you, no cal code in forms,

but you do have cal code in reports so you may be able to find a way to make a button run a non-printing report that uses the report request form to ask all your yes/no questions, then have the cal code call the release sales order codeunit. only problem is not sure how to feed the code unit the sales order number from your non-printing report

Maybe someone here can help with that.

Seraph

Thank you for yourhelp nunomaia!

themave: That sounds exactly like my problem with the form that I made. I just don't know how to feed the codeunit the Sales Header (which is what I assume the error message is telling me).

Miklos_Hollender

I think this is impossible, because if you run a form, then you can give it the current record (RunFormLink property or something like that), but you cannot write code to run the codeunit right on that record without the licence. If you run a report, you could write code, but you cannot make the report get the record as it would need writing code in the sales order form.

I think you should pay a solution center 15 minutes to do that, it shouldn't be expensive.

themave

Miklos Hollender wrote:

I think this is impossible, because if you run a form, then you can give it the current record (RunFormLink property or something like that), but you cannot write code to run the codeunit right on that record without the licence. If you run a report, you could write code, but you cannot make the report get the record as it would need writing code in the sales order form.

I think you should pay a solution center 15 minutes to do that, it shouldn't be expensive.

thanks for the info, but could you tell me where there is a solution center in the US that would do any work and only bill 15 mins? I get billed for 15 min for them to open an email with a request. Then, for something simple like this, there would be another 1 hour to write up the spec. with the quote to do the work. Which I have never had a quote for less then 2 - 4 hours to do anything, no matter how simple. they say they have to write it, test it and that can't be done in less time. So at best this would cost me 3.25 hours billable time. With 1.25 of that incurred just to get the qoute to do the work.

Seraph

I had the same thought themave. Sure I could most likely code this in 15 min, or get someone who knows what they're doing to do it in 15 min, but there's no way they'd only bill you for 15 min.

Miklos_Hollender

But you can also turn to a solution center abroad, for half of the price, with similar quality. Should I recommend you one in PM? The only drawback is that they cannot modify objects that exist only in the US version - f.e. payroll.

Marije_Brummel

US objects are no problem for me

themave

What we are evaluating now is purchasing the application designer granule for $8000, and doing our own mods in house.

We just upgraded from 2.0 to 4.0 cost was around $50000, with new license granules and all the conversion work. I see little to no chance that we will spend the money to upgrade to Navision 5.0, for many reasons. They wanted 10K more when we were upgrading to go to 4.0 SP1 instead of plane 4.0.

A big reason I don’t think we will upgrade is we use the native database, and most of 5.0’s really neat features require SQL server 2005, and there is no chance we are going to add that to the mix. We would likely have to add another person just to maintain SQL and we are too small for that. And even if I could do all the SQL server admin on top of the rest of my responsibilities, we would still need to pay a solution center a pretty significant sum to tune Navision for SQL. As I read even the SP1 And SP2 stuff, it talks a lot about optimizing code for SQL performance. In 7 years with the native database I never worried about optimizing code for performance, but now it appears all the new Microsoft code is going to be geared to SQL performance, so I can see the Native database performance suffering as a result.

I am thinking that we have already paid for the annual support for this year June 06 to July 07. So we will work out any bugs we have and cancel the maintenance after that. And rely on freelancers and myself to make any changes needed. Our annual maintenance was 16K by itself. So the application designer granule is looking like a good deal.

Miklos_Hollender

Mark:

But "half the price" can be a problem Actualy, I truly know guys over here who are doing acceptable quality stuff for 250 EUR a day.

Themave:

it looks, but the thing is, Navision can offer unpleasant surprises even after 3 years of day-to-day programming. I suggest to calculate an internal consultancy charge - how much a days work worth. Get a quote on the number of days from an NSC. Assume you will need to spend 3 times as much days due to inexperience and having to chase illogical behaviour in Navision where only programming experience helps. Compare them. And assume an Eastern European outsourced NSC will charge about half of the US one. Decide which of the three is the most cost-effective.

Miklos_Hollender

A personal question, I'm just curious. And American internal IT employee must cost at least $4000 a month. So why was buying the licence for $8000 ever be a question? It looks like a negligible cost. Or are your bosses similar to the ones in Hungary that made me "flee" to the UK: giving good salaries, but refusing to spend money for the essential tools that leverage the work of their employees to be as efficient as it can?

Marije_Brummel

Info please.

themave

Miklos Hollender wrote:

A personal question, I'm just curious. And American internal IT employee must cost at least $4000 a month. So why was buying the licence for $8000 ever be a question? It looks like a negligible cost. Or are your bosses similar to the ones in Hungary that made me "flee" to the UK: giving good salaries, but refusing to spend money for the essential tools that leverage the work of their employees to be as efficient as it can?

We don't have an it guy, I am the financial controller and handle the network requirements also. That is one of the reasons we choose Navision, it pretty much runs it's self. Our whole admin staff is 3 people. the remaining 45 employees are mechanics and counter sales people for a heavy duty truck equipment shop. We build transmissions and rear-end for large trucks. But yes we are cheap.

themave

Also, when we look at the $8000 license cost, we look at how much customization can we get for that 8K from our solution center. Over this last year our solution center has radically changed their billing to be very aggressive. So, now when we look at what can we get with that 8k in customizations, it is not very much. but the other question is do I have time and the knowledge to become proficient in Navision programming if we spend the 8K on the application designer granule.

We would have been much better off if 7 years ago when we implemented Navision if we had bought the license then. But at that time I had never programmed at all. And our solution center didn’t push us buying it. And why would they, it could only take away revenue from them, and possibly add a lot of trouble for them if I made a ton of changes to Navision that didn’t follow any standard conventions, or messed up Navision and then came running to them to rescue me.

nunomaia

Some times I work as a freelancer for NSC, and I have tried to help Seraph, I don’t mind to lose 5 minutes of my time do create confirmation in Navision But problem isn’t the good will, some customers have very specific add-ons and it’s impossible to compile some objects, if the NSC doesn't work with that add-ons.

Some customers buy the granule 7300 to do in-house Navision customization, but we have to be honest, a few customers have better knowledge of Navision than a NSC. I believe that a customer should only do in-house development if know Navision quite well. Customizations of Navision can de quite dangerous.

For example in Navision transfer orders don’t allow negative inventory, it is easy do allow negative inventory; a single comment in a line of code solves that. But it will have dangerous implications, adjust costing report will give wrong costing in item ledger entry.

Navision it's different from SAP and other ERP's, it gives a extreme flexibility in customization, but you have to know what you are doing.

Some NSC have huge prices (US prices as much higher than Europe), but quality isn't cheap, I have seen cheap implementations to fail, and expensive implementations to fail too .

themave

Ok back on topic for a minute, I just thought of something that might work for this.

If you use a non-printing report, you could see if it could send the key strokes as it closes.

You can use Windows Script Host (WSH) , then simulate pressing CTRL+F11 (shortcut to release document)

CreateObject("WScript.Shell").SendKeys("^F11")');

I haven't used the windows script host, but I believe this is the syntax to use it. the ^ means CRTL

So, if you have a button that ran the non-printing report, you would use the report request form to ask your yes/no questions and depending on the answers you would vary the
Report - OnPostReport() code to send the keys.

worth a try.

Marije_Brummel

Going off-topic again

For a non-NAV devoper you are very creative in C/AL =D>

You should consider a career change