Transform Forms to RTC - guidelines

jdellatorre

Hi guys,

My question is more of a general basis not for a specific error.
I transformed around 200 forms to pages and 20 of them I cant even compile after the process.

I have already googled for the specific errors, but havent found anything helpful e.g.
- You cannot enter 'Table No.=CONST(15),Code=FIELD(No.)' in FieldNo.
- You have specified an unknown variable. cmdWFUndo Define the variable under 'Global C/AL symbols'.
- The variable DIMENSIONVALUECODEONFORMAT is defined more than once. An example could be: 'File' exists as both a data type and a global variable.

So Im having troubles now applying the right procedure. Where should I implement my changes? In the C/AL code of the Forms, in the TIF editor or directly in the pages(worst case)?

Surprisingly even on MSDN there isnt really a knowledge base for resolving such error.

Can you help me? Im thanksful for every hint or suggestion you have.

Thank you,
Juergen

lvanvugt

Some guidelines we use:

If you are going to maintain both forms and pages do NOT edit anything on the pages - i.e. your worst case - as retransforming the pages will overrule these changes and will continuously need to manually update the pages; in this case edit only forms and TIF setup

[list=2]In case you leave behind forms and continue with pages only, well go for editing pages[/list]

As we are still maintaining forms we are still executing on the first 'rule'. Because of that and the fact that some things seems only achievable on pages we are investigating how to trick the transformation tool by either feeding it with additional info we will put in the TIF tool or by creating an additional tool that will post process the outcome of the Transformation Tool.

jdellatorre

Thank u lvanvugt for your reply.

I know mainting pages and forms is quite difficult. So I am thinking about applying the same rule as you.

Have you ever met the errors previously posted?
The MSDN provides some basic technique but unfortunatly does not go into the details. So where have you found all information. Try and error?

lvanvugt

Indeed: T & E. And of course: search on the forums like mibuso.

jdellatorre

Looks like Ill spend a lot of time on this project
Nevertheless, I am little bit disappointed that there is not a KB with some basic error solutions...

Ok. Thanks for ur help.
Ill take note of the errors I encounter and make a small tutorial out of it.

Thank you
Juergen

Alex_Chow

The only guideline I can honestly give you is (after doing 2 upgrades) you're better off redesigning pages from scratch instead of using transformation tools.

jdellatorre

Hi Alex!

Thank for your honest answer

I would consider it as a worst case scenario as we have hundreds of customized forms....
And they all should be synchronised... and the only way I can think about is to use this transformation tool.

At the moment Im just digging at the surface... so I expect to get my hands very dirty

Thanks
Juergen

Alex_Chow

jdellatorre wrote:

Hi Alex!

Thank for your honest answer

I would consider it as a worst case scenario as we have hundreds of customized forms....
And they all should be synchronised... and the only way I can think about is to use this transformation tool.

At the moment Im just digging at the surface... so I expect to get my hands very dirty

Thanks
Juergen

I tried using the transformation tools, but found myself spending more time fixing random and wierd problems that are hard to find. It was a lot easier to upgrade and you learn a lot more about pages this way.

jdellatorre

I understand your point.
Especially, as pages are the future for navision and forms will be outdated soon.

However we have developed here heavy customization onto our forms. Would be a pity to rebuild everything from scratch.
Maybe we can apply here a mixed transformation... transform most of the pages and rebuild the rest.

I will keep you up to date how the transformation process is going.

lvanvugt

IMHO: working to get the transformation work OK will learn you a lot about the new UX (i.e. page and all involved). It sure did me and my colleagues.

Nightrider

Hi,

I know this post was posted a while ago but I'm hoping the following will be of help to future "Upgraders" who are frustrated with the tool.

I did the following and it worked very well and very fast. This part applies to transforming Standard Nav Forms that have been customized:

1. Identify and list all Standard Nav Forms that have been customized.
2. Transform these forms with the TIF tool as per the TIF tool instructions and import the Pages.xml into your upgraded database. (Be sure to import ALL standard Pages before doing this).
3. Export all the pages imported in Step 2 to a text file. (Call it CustomizedPages.txt)
4. Open a Standard Nav Chronus database and export all the pages with the same ID's to a text file. (Call it StandardPages.txt)
5. Create a copy of CustomizedPages.txt and call it MergedPages.txt.
6. Perform a compare and merge of these three text files (DevTool is useless with this so use a different one, I used DiffMerge).
7. You will notice that allot of Properties ("Importance=Promoted", etc.), FactBoxes, Parts, etc. aren't in your MergedPages.txt and CustomizedPages.txt files so merge them in from the StandardPages.txt file. You want to keep CustomizedPages.txt and StandardPages.txt as they were and only merge into MergedPages.txt. Save MergedPages.txt once you've merged all the changes.
8. Import MergedPages.txt into your upgraded database.
9. Compile all the pages. The error list should be quite short but there will be a few. Solve them.

The stuff that is completely custom (objects with IDs within the 50 000 range) are still a bit of a problem. Some of ours transformed but there were a few that had to be recreated as pages manually.

I hope this helps.

Regards,
Vince