Interactive Reports in NAV 2013 R2

With the world cup football 2014 in full swing, I am struggling to catch up up with my goal of weekly post to my blog Smile. But thought of catching up on the same today.

In this edition of post, let me show you some of the interactive features of Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2013 R2 reports

NAV 2013 R2 reports can be pretty interactive in terms of –

  • Interactive sorting
  • Drilling down to detailed data
  • Toggling the visibility of any field [say image] based on user action.

These features are kind of giving more power to end users of NAV to view their reports in their own way. Let them decide how they want to sort the report and help them with details of information wherever possible.

To demonstrate the same, let me create a report in NAV 2013 R2 and take you through these interactive features.

I will create a simple report based on Item Master – ‘Item List Interactive’ with the following columns displayed in the report –

  • – No
  • – Description
  • – Base Unit of Measure
  • – Costing Method
  • – Inventory and
  • – Picture of the item

So I opened the developer environment of NAV 2013 R2, created a new report and inserted the DataItem with the Data Source ‘Item’ table and added the above mentioned columns in the Report Dataset Designer as below –

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Now let us design the layout of the report. [I am using SQL Server 2012 Report Builder 3.0 for layout Designing]. Go to View > Layout and this will open the Report Builder’s Layout Designer [a blank one]. Just add a table and drag and drop the fields displayed in Dataset_Result under the group Datasets in the Report data pane in the left [You could use a Table Wizard (Insert > Table > Table Wizard) also to include the fields in the layout] –

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Your layout will look more or less similar to my above screenshot.

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[Note: Use a image control instead of a textbox control to display the picture field. Otherwise the the picture column will not show the images of the items and will display an ‘Error’ wherever picture is present for the item.]

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Now your basic report is complete. Close the report builder and save the report and run it from the object designer itself. Though we have not selected any key in the DataItem’s property ‘DataItemTableView’, you will see that the list of items are sorted on [No] column as that’s the primary key of the item table.

image

Also, wherever the item has a picture stored in the database, the same will be displayed in the Picture column of the report.

image

Our next job is to make it more interactive and enable the major columns [Say ‘No’, ‘Description’ and ‘Costing Method’] dynamically sortable during runtime. For that we will go back to our report and open the layout in report builder.

In the layout design, right click on the header textbox of the [No] column and open the text box properties.

image

In the properties window, go to the Interactive Sorting tab and in the right hand side pane, tick the [Enable interactive sorting on this text box]

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Keep the [Choose what to sort] on [detail row] selected and go to the field [sort by]. Here select [No] column. Click on the ‘Ok’ and you are done with making the [No] column interactively sortable during runtime.

Similarly make the [Description] and [Costing Method] column interactively sortable by repeating the above steps (Right click on the header of the column and open the text box properties. Go to the interactive Sorting tab and tick the [Enable interactive sorting on this text box]. Also select the corresponding field in [sort by]) .

Save the report layout and come out of the Report Builder. In NAV report designer window, click anywhere and it will prompt you to synchronise the report object and the modified RDLC [.rdl] file –

image

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[This happens every time you modify anything in the report layout in either Report Builder or Visual Studio and come back to NAV report designer]
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Say yes and save & compile the report.

Let us test how the report is behaving now after all the above changes. Select the report in Object Designer window and run it. This will open the request page of the report where click on the preview button to display the report –

image

In the preview, immediately you can notice that there are some visual changes in the report and the [No], [Description] and [Costing Method] columns have up/down arrows in their header. This denotes that these columns are enabled with interactive sorting.

Click on the column header of [No] and you will see the sorting of the data is getting changed from ascending to descending and if you click again, the sorting is reverting back to ascending way. The same sorting behaviour you can see for the other 2 columns too ([Description] and [Costing Method]).

image

So, we just made our simple ‘Item List Interactive’ report dynamically / interactively sortable on the basis of multiple columns.

That’s closes this session on Interactive features of Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2013 R2 reports. Do send / write to me your feedback on the same. In my next session I will continue with my discussion on rest of the interactive features [Drill down and Image Toggling] of NAV 2013 Report. Till then happy reading and enjoy the Football World Cup matches Smile.

[Going to watch Brazil vs Mexico match tonight]

ADCS – Automated Data Capture System

Probably I felt about writing on ADCS (Automated Data Capture System) configuration in Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2013 R2, when I myself struggled a bit to gather all the relevant information to manage it properly. There are always some missing points in all documentation related to ADCS configuration and all of them are not collated together very well in any documentation.

So here is my guide to ADCS configuration Smile.

First of all let’s understand the architecture of ADCS in NAV 2013 R2; mind it – its no more MSMQ as communication mode between VT100 plugin and NAV server. Now the communication happens via web services –

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[the above image is taken from msdn site]

I am not going into details of the architecture here. I assume you already understand it or will read about it on your own.

Now, what exactly you need to concentrate on to configure the ADCS? I divide it into 4 parts:

A. Installation of ADCS [Microsoft Dynamics NAV VT100 Plugin]

B. NAV configuration changes for ADCS

C. Logon permission to VT100 Service

D. ADCS config file.

Let me install ADCS afresh in my laptop and describe the steps to you:

A. Installation of ADCS:

I already have NAV 2013 R2 installed in my laptop and I am opening the add / remove programs and adding the ADCS component to the same by clicking on the ‘Change’

image

Once the NAV 2013 R2 maintenance window opens, select ‘Add or Remove Components’. This will open the list of components available to be installed –

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Click on the ‘Automated Data Capture System’ and select ‘Run from my computer’. Click on the ‘Next’ button and that will open the ‘Specify parameters’ window –

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if you have NAV 2013 R2 already installed, you don’t really need to change anything in this window. Review the properties and click on the ‘Apply’. This will start installing the ADCS component for Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2013 R2

image

This completes the installation of NAV ADCS component. Let me go to my next step –

B. Configuration changes in NAV for ADCS:

Once the installation is successfully done, let us come back to NAV RTC and check few things in which will enable ADCS to communicate with NAV server / database effectively –

B.1 ADCS User:

You need to create a ADCS user which will be used for authenticating the device’s access to the database. Go to ‘CRONUS India Ltd. / Departments / Administration / Application Setup / Warehouse / ADCS’ and open the ‘ADCS Users’

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Create a new user and assign a password to it. The same user id and password you need to pass while connecting NAV from the handheld device.

B.2 Connect ADCS user with the Warehouse Employee:

Identify the ADCS user as one of the Warehouse employee [which in turn identify itself as one of the window’s login in NAV. for more details on the same, read about creating warehouse employees]. Go to  ‘<Company Name> / Departments / Warehouse / Setup / Warehouse’ and open ‘Warehouse Employees’ window –

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Link between windows user [warehouse employee] and the ADCS user you have just created in previous step.

Now this user will have a default location [Default will be ticked next to the location code] which he can use in his warehouse related transactions in NAV. The same location must be ADCS enabled too. This step need to be repeated if the user has access to multiple location.

B.3 Enabling Location for ADCS use:

Open the location card [where the above defined user has access to work on] and tick ADCS checkbox in the warehouse fast tab.

image

B.4 Check the miniforms:

Go to ‘<Company Name> / Departments / Administration / Application Setup / Warehouse / ADCS’ and open the list of miniforms

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These are the default miniforms available in ‘Cronus’ company and the same can be copied to any new company / installation you have created. These miniforms can manage all the standard warehouse functions / activities but you have the liberty to create additional miniforms to cater to additional custom activities [If you create any additional miniforms, the same may need changes in the associated ADCS related codeunits in NAV. These codeunits are between 7700 and 7714].

B.5 Publish the ADCS Web Service:

Publish the Web Service which will be called by the VT100 Component [Check the architecture at the top of the post] of NAV. Open the Web services window and add a new service with the object type ‘Codeunit’ and select 7714 in ‘Object Id’ –

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Be sure the to keep the Service Name as ‘ADCS’. Check the service availability by copying the SOAP url and pasting it in your browser. This should display the details of the Web Service.

C. Logon permission to VT100 Service

Additionally the ADCS component of NAV [Microsoft Dynamics NAV VT100 plugin] must have the access to NAV database. This is determined by whether the logon user used for this plugin has the necessary permission in NAV database or not.

You can use an existing user id already used in NAV as logon user id for VT100 or you can create a dedicated windows user id for this use. The same user must have ‘ADCS ALL’ Permission Set. If you are not sure about the permission set you can go ahead with the ‘Super’ Permission Set assigned to the user.

For example, here I have used my user id as logon user for Microsoft Dynamics NAV VT100 plugin. [Services can be opened by typing in ‘services.msc’ in your Search / Run box]

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Start the service of this plugin once you are done with logon information changes.

D. ADCS config file:

Lastly you need to check if the information mentioned in the ADCS config file are correct as per the NAV environment you are working on. Go to ‘C:Program Files (x86)Microsoft Dynamics NAV71Automated Data Capture System’ and edit the ‘Microsoft.Dynamics.Nav.VT100Plugin.exe.config’ file. [Note: VT100 plugin is a 32 bit application and i have 64 bit OS. That;’s why it under the folder ‘Program Files (x86)]

Majorly 3 attributes need to be checked here –

a. “NavWSEndpoint” url: Make sure this has the right url pointing to your ADCS web service. You can actually copy the SOAP url from the ADCS Web Service in Web Services window and paste it here.

b. Terminal listenIP: This denotes the IP address of the machine that is running the VT100 Plug-in service. 127.0.0.1 denotes the localhost. This you need to mention while logging to VT100 plugin from Handheld devices [This you can find in your Hosts files located in ‘C:WindowsSystem32driversetc’ folder]

c. Terminal listenPort: VT100 plugin uses port number 6666 by default.

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Note: if you have changed any text in this file for your environment, please make sure that you have restarted ‘Microsoft Dynamics NAV VT100 Plugin’ service. 

Phew! Thankfully all the configuration is now over and I need to test the same. For this I will try simulating the ADCS functionality using a HyperTerminal client application  or Telnet. As windows 7 (my os) no longer have a HyperTerminal client included I will settle for Telnet,

[Note: you can enable Telnet in ‘add or remove programs > Turn windows feature on or off’ from control Panel if it is already not enabled / not visible]

So I have run the telnet and the telnet command prompts open up. Below mentioned command prompt is to connect to my VT100 service using port no 6666 in localhost-

‘o<space>localhost<space>6666’

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Pressed enter and I got the ADCS login window displayed in my telnet command prompt –

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Typed in my user id and pressed enter. Typed in my password and pressed enter.

[telnet can take 1 input at a time so you need to put your user id first and press enter and then you can put your password. And the text display may not look like that you have typed it right. but don’t worry, type user id and password correctly and it will work fine]

voila! We are done here. This opens up the list of functionality available to be used through ADCS and this list is nothing but the list of miniforms available in NAV –

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That ends my session on configuring ADCS in Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2013 R2. From here you can go ahead and experiment on the default ADCS functions available in NAV.

If anything in any stage of this tour is not working fine in your environment, the best way to troubleshoot the same is to check the windows event viewer. it gives a hint / a clear picture what is wrong in your configuration. I am attaching a few scribbling I did on the whiteboard during one of my classroom training

9KTT5eCbUV0e8WW9Q92EK6T8

If you want further details on troubleshooting, you can refer to below msdn link –

ADCS Troubleshoot Guide

See you guys in my next post (probably a topic on interactive report designing in NAV 2013 R2. Keep Reading Smile

NAV 2013 R2 Report layout design with Report Builder

I was travelling to Kochi, Kerala to conduct a 6 day session on NAV 2013 R2 topics to a bunch of guys from one of the Microsoft Partner. it was 3 months back and as client requested to demonstrate the topics in NAV 2013 R2, I upgraded my laptop with NAV 2013 R2 from NAV 2013 FP1.

During the training, when we reach the topics on Reports, I got a rude shock that my report layout  design is no longer opening and its throwing an error as below (though I have visual studio 2010 installed in laptop) –

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Normally I ensure to keep all dependent software of NAV installed right in my laptop. But this time I missed out the fact that NAV 2013 R2 is no longer compatible with Visual Studio 2010. Rather it needs VS 2012 or higher.

Now I got a situation here as I even don’t have the installable of Visual Studio 2012 / 2013  and I need to demonstrate the report designing features to my audience.

Fortunately with my installation of NAV 2013 (R2), the SQL Server 2012 express version was installed and along with that, the Report Builder 3.0 too was got installed in my Lapi. Though I was more comfortable in designing the reports in Visual Studio, but I quickly adapted to the new environment and managed the show perfectly. And trust me my audience was happy .

So the fact is that –

  • NAV 2013 R2 no longer uses Visual Studio 2010 for report layout design. Rather it looks for Visual Studio 2012 / 2013.
  • If you don’t have the Visual Studio 2012 / 2013, you can still manage to design the report using Report Builder 3.0. This is a component of SQL server 2012 reporting services and gets installed when you install SQL server 2012.
  • Among the 2 report authoring tools, Visual studio is still the default report authoring tool.  So even though you have the Report Builder 3.0 in your machine, you will see that NAV 2013 R2 is looking for Visual Studio 2012 / 2103 and still throwing the above mentioned error (picture).

To make NAV 2013 R2 use Report Builder 3.0, you need to change an option property in your NAV environment. To do the same –

  • Open NAV 2013 R2 development environment.
  • Go to Tools > Options. the below mentioned screen will open –

image

  • Change the ‘Use Report Builder’ property to ‘Yes’. The default value will be ‘<No>’.
  • Press ‘Ok’.

Once this is done, NAV 2013 R2 will no longer look for Visual Studio 2012 / 2013 and will open the Report Builder 3.0 for designing the report layout.

Note: If you are interested in knowing the difference between designing the report in Visual Studio (Report Designer) and designing the report in Report Builder, you can check out the below url for more details  –

Designing Reports in Report Designer and Report Builder 3.0 (SSRS)

Enjoy Reading. I will come back with more topics on report designing soon. bye for now.

Quit, Break, SKIP, EXIT

One of my student asked the following question few days back and I just tried to answer them in simple language. You may already know those answer right.

“can u please tell me the diff. in quit/break/skip/exit in NAV & how to use it properly……..”

Just to answer your question –

1. Quit 

Quit can only be used in Report, Dataport or XMLport. (Like Currreport.quit). It quits (come out from) the report or dataport or XMLPORT. If some processing of data happened before the quit statement, all of those data manipulations will be reversed (rolled back).

2. Break

Break can be used in 2 places –

a. in any loop (repeat..until) – This statement will break the loop and come out of the loop without further processing. All the data manipulation before this statement will remain intact.

b. In a report or dataport or XMLport. This statement will take you out from any trigger (like on prereport, Onpresection etc)

3. SKIP 

SKIP is only used in Report / Dataport / XMLPORT. This statement skips the iteration of a dataitem.

4. EXIT

EXIT normally used in functions / triggers to return a value. (say a function returns a numeric value –

Myfunction(integer A, Integer B) Integer—

EXIT(A+B);

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Hope the above answer helps you. I will try to send a more detailed answer to you (with example) soon. Keep writing me your problems and ask ur freinds to send their problems to me too.


You can also send me a mail to snehanshu.mandal@gmail.com

Navision – How to find out Square Root / Cube Root?

We all know how to raise a number to the power n. Use the powerful nummeric function ‘Power’.NewNumber := POWER(Number, Power);
So Power(4,2) will result in 16.But how to find out the roots (square, cuber or nth root)?

Simple use the same Power function – And just change the ‘Power’ parameter of the function.

So to find out the square root of say 16, use

Power(16,1/2); This will result in 4

to find out the Cube root of say 8, use

Power(16,1/3); This will result in 2.

to find out the nth root of any number just use –

NewNumber := Power(Number,1/n);

How to indent multiple lines of code in Navision

What to do if you need to indent several lines of Code (Just because youmade the changes in code lately) in any Navision Object? Will you do it manually one line at a time?
Don’t despair. There is a simple way to do it –
To indent several lines of code, select those several lines and press TAB. The code indents with two spaces to the right, every time that TAB is pressed.
To indent several lines of code to the left, select those lines, and press SHIFT+TAB. This indents the code with one space to the left, every time that SHIFT+TAB is pressed.
Block indentation enables developers to indent several lines of code in only three keystrokes (one for highlighting the code and two for pressing SHIFT and TAB.)

How to Send SMTP mail from Navision Application

2 Steps to use it –
1. Setup the SMTP mail in Navision.
2. Use the functions avaliable in Codeunit 400 (SMTP Mail)
1. Setup the SMTP mail in Navision:
Go to Administration> IT administration > General Setup > SMTP Setup. The following screen will open –
You need a SMTP server address (IP or link). I have used my office SMTP server. If your SMTP server permits anonymous mailing, you can choose authentication as ‘Anonymous’ where you don’t need to mention any user id and password.
If your SMTP Server does not allow anonymous mailing, you need to choose authentication as ‘Basic’ and need to mention one valid User id and Password.

2. Use the functions available in Codeunit 400 (SMTP Mail) :

Once the setup is done, you can start mailing using the functions available in SMTP mail codeunit.
a) Take a new form and take a command button on it. On clicking of that button the mail will be send (Just for the example)
b) Take a global variable ‘SMAIL’ of data type ‘Codeunit’ and subtype ‘SMTP mail’ codeunit. This will give you the access to the functions available in that codeunit.
c) Now the actual code. Write the following code on ‘On Push’ trigger of the command button
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CLEAR(SMAIL);
SMAIL.CreateMessage(‘Snehanshu’,’snehanshu.mandal@gmail.com’,’snehanshu.mandal@gmail.com’,’Warning – Inventory’, ‘Item 50005 has a inventory below minimum inventory level’,FALSE);
[Syntax for the Createmessage function – Createmessage([sender’s name] ,[sender’s id],[recipient’s id or ids],[subject] ,[body line] ,[html formatted or not]]
SMAIL.AddAttachment(‘d:Sales Invoice.xlsx’);
SMAIL.Send;
MESSAGE(‘mail send’);
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That’s it. Now click on the command button, and the mail will be sent to the recipients.
Note:
1. There can be multiple recipients. Just put them as comma separated text in the recipient parameter.
2. You can add more body lines using ‘AppendBody’ function.
3. You can also mark a CC or BCC copy of the mail using ‘AddCC’ ‘AddBCC’ functions.
If you are not sure about the SMTP server, just search in google how to use, rediffmil, Gmail or Hotmail or any other mailing system as your smtp server.

Do we know all about Default Dimensions? How to make a dimension Code Mandatory for all the the accounts in Chart of Accounts


Simple. Open Chart of Account, Select all the accounts there, Click on Account > Dimensions > Dimensions-Multiple. Choose the dimensions you want to make mandatory for the accounts and mention ‘Code mandatory’ in ‘Value Posting’ field. That’s it.That’s the most common answer you will have if you ask somebody how to make a dimension mandatory across all the accounts in Chart of Account. This common answer is the most common mistake functional consultants make during implementation. Yes, the common answer is not at all right answer.The above described method of making a dimension mandatory is only valid to make a dimension mandatory for a set of accounts only. Not for entire all the accounts of Chart of accounts.

You may argue – Why not? I am selecting all the accounts from Chart of accounts and making a dimension mandatory for them. And it works.

But think again. Think about a situation where you are creating a new account in Chart of Account.
The dimension you made mandatory for rest of the accounts will not be readily become mandatory for this new account.
So you have to make that dimension mandatory for this new account manually following the same method. If you forget, it can be a disaster waiting for you.

Rather the right method of making a dimension mandatory across all the accounts is much simpler and full proof (foolproof as well). Use the ‘Account type default Dim.’ feature. Its available in the Dimension window itself.

Open the Financial Management > General Ledger > Setup > Dimension.
Select The Dimension you want to mandatory across all accounts
Click Dimension > Account Type Default Dim.
Mention the table no. behind the Chart of Account (That’s Table no. 15)
And mention that it’s ‘Code mandatory’ in the ‘Value Posting’ field.
And this will ensure that the particular dimension is mandatory for entire set of records of te table no. 15 (nothing but the Chart of Account). And in future, any new accounts created in charts of accounts will be automatically included in that mandatory list.
This is the way you can make a dimension mandatory for an entire type of account. For example, the customer account, Vendor Account, Item Master etc.
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Dimension, Shortcut Dimension, Global Dimension – Confused?

People often gets confused about the terms used to describe dimensions. – Dimension, Shortcut Dimension, Global Dimension – are they same or what? Why we need so many different dimensions?

To understand the concept you need to go back to history of Navision and also need to understand the basic concept of Dimension. Let me try to elaborate it.

Dimension: Dimensions are nothing but parameter for your analysis of data. In other words, they are additional information attached to your transactions and you can analyse / summarize your transactions on the basis of those parameters. Say, you want to analyse your fuel expenses on the basis of Car no. So you need to define a dimension called ‘Car’ and put all the car nos in the dimension value list.

Similarly, if you need to analyse telephone expenses on the basis of Telephone nos or travel expenses on the basis of employee nos then, you will define Telephone and Employee Dimensions and list down the dimension values for those dimensions. So at the end you can have a list of dimensions & their values as below:

— Car — 1001 — WB 300356

— 1002 — UP5005333

— 1003 — DEL678932

— Tel — 98444320 — Ashish Banerjee
— 87909098 — Snehanshu Mandal
— Emp — 1001 — Snehanshu Mandal
— 1002 — Vinay Iyer
— 1003 — Shridhar Varasala

You can define the dimension in Navision from ‘Financial Management > General Ledger > Setup > Dimensions > Dimension’. And then define the respective dimension values.

This way you can define any no of dimensions and attach any no of dimension values while entering any transaction in the system.

Now that’s was Dimension. So what is global dimension? Lets go back few years down to Navision history.

There was time when Navision didn’t have the facility to attach unlimited no of dimensions to transactions. Instead it had only 2 fixed dimensions with each transactions – Department & Project. And to attach these 2 dimension with each transactions, Navision had created these 2 fields in all the transaction tables (e.g in 81 – Gen. Journal Line, 36 – Sales Header, 37 – Sales Lines, 38 – Purchase Header, 39 – Purchase Header and so on). See the figure below.

 Now you can’t just keep on adding new fields in each transaction table to achieve unlimited no of dimension attachment feature. So Navision started storing dimension information attached to different transactions in 2 separate tables (Journal Line Dimension – for storing dimensions attached to all journal transactions, Document Dimension – for storing dimensions attached to all document type of transactions). So Navision came up with a different method of storing dimension values attached with transactions.
What happened to the 2 fields present in all transaction tables? To reuse these 2 fields, Navision came up with a concept called ‘Global Dimensions’. So 2 dimensions from your dimension master can be defined as Global Dimension and their values can directly be attached with any transaction (in those 2 fields present globally – They automatically take the caption of global dimension defined and displayed accordingly to users – using ‘CaptionClass’ property). Just because they are present in all the transaction tables, these dimensions make it easier to take out reporting based on these 2 dimension and helps you in easy data entry. Ideally they are the most commonly used dimensions across in Navision Company.
So global dimensions are nothing but ordinary dimensions. Only thing they are globally present in the system and helps in data entry (dimension attachment) and reporting on most commonly used dimensions in a company.
But if you are going to attach more than 2 global dimensions in transactions, then the very attachment of dimension process is slightly lengthy. I mean you need to click on the transaction line > click on button ‘Line’ > Dimensions > Select the dimension code and dimension value.
Can we make it little easier for data entry where more than 2 global dimensions you need to attach to transaction? Off course we can. Use the concept ‘Shortcut Dimensions’
Shortcut Dimensions: There can be 8 dimensions displayed directly on any tabular transaction form (Journal lines or Purchase Lines, Sales Lines etc) just to facilitate the data entry. Remember, these dimension will not be present directly in the table but only displayed in the form. They are shortcuts to 8 different dimensions. So that you don’t need to go for the lengthy dimension attachment process. That’s why the name came ‘Shortcut Dimension’. And the 2 global dimensions automatically gets assigned as first 2 shortcut dimensions. (Check out the General ledger setup).
See the screen above (General Journal) and you will find there are 8 dimensions present (coloured columns). These are 8 shortcut dimensions. First 2 are global dimensions (directly present in the Gen. Journal Line table – the transaction table used here) coloured green are automatically became first 2 shortcut dimensions. Rest 6 columns are just displayed in the form only to facilitate the data entry (not present in the Gen. Journal Line table). If you enter some values in those columns, system will insert the relevant dimension and dimension values in the journal line dimension table for the transaction. If you enter values in first 2 shortcut dimensions, they will be inserted in the global fields present in the current transaction tables as well as the journal line dimension table.
That’s the funda of Dimension, Global Dimension and Shortcut Dimension. Hope i am able to clear the idea a little bit. If you want to discuss it further, do send me your comments or simply fire a mail to me (snehanshu.mandal@gmail.com).
See you in next post.

What is No. Series Relationship?

I got surprised when i discovered that so many people working in Navision for quite some time doesn’t understand No. series Relationship feature.
So what is No. Series Relationship?

Say you want to generate different invoice nos based on to where (geography) you are selling your service / material. So your domestic sales can have invoice nos which is different from invoice nos of export sales.

Now to implement the above feature, you need to use at least 2 no. series for invoice numbering? But in Sales & Receivables Setup’s Numbering tab, you have provision of mentioning only one no. series for Sales Invoice nos. how to resolve this?

You can go for some customisation or simply use the No. series relationship.

No. Series Relationship is a feature in Navision which helps you to group multiple no. series together and use it for one document no. Take an example of a sales Invoice. This feature will make 2 (or more) no. series related to each other and both can be used for the sales invoice nos.
Lets do it in Navision.
Create 2 no. series S-INV and S-INV EXP. First one for the domestic Sales & Second one for Export Sales.

Now relate the second no. series (S-INV EXP) with the first one with no. series relationship. To do that, select the seclect the S-INV in no. series window and click on the menu button series -> Relationships. Select the second no. series (P-INV EXP) in this window. Close it.
Your relationship between the 2 no. series is done. Now to use these no. series for sales invoice nos, you need assign it to sales & Receivables Setup.

Open Sales & Receivables Setup and go to the numbering tab. Choose the first no. series (P-INV) in the Invoice Nos.
Now you are ready to use both the no. series to generate the Sales Invoice nos. To test it –
Open the sales Invoice Window (Sales & Marketting -> Order Processing -> Invoices) and press F3 to create a new Sales Invoice. Don’t tab away from the no. field. Now click on the assist edit button (the 3 dot button) next to No. field and you will find system is suggesting both the no. series to you. Select any one series (depending on what type of Sales invoice – Domestic / Export you are creating) and a new no. document no will be generated.
So, you have the option of using 2 no. series (or more) for one single document no. You can extend this functionality further by automating the selection of no. series own the basis of USER ID.
Experiment on it. See you in next post.