Extending Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Operations Cookbook

Simon Buxton

• Publisher: Packt Publishing
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781786463302
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business Intelligence
• Index: Business

Have the best tools at your fingertips to extend and maximize the efficiency of your business managementAbout This Book• Follow practical and easy-to-grasp examples, illustrations and coding to make the most out of Dynamics 365 for Operations in your business scenario• Extend Dynamics 365 for Operations in a cost-effective manner by using tools you already have• Solve common business problems with the valuable features of Dynamics 365 for OperationsWho This Book Is ForThis book is for those who are getting to grips with Dynamics 365 for Operations developers or those migrating from C# development. The guide includes information essential for new and experienced Dynamics 365 for Operations developers.What You Will Learn• Create enumerated and extended data types• Understand the importance of using patterns and frameworks while creating a unique concept for your solution• Service and deploy your code and packages to improve performance• Write and perform unit tests to automate the testing process• Design your security model and policies to provide code access privileges• Construct the UI and business logic to add Power BI to dashboardsIn DetailDynamics 365 for Operations is the ERP element of Microsoft's new Dynamics 365 Enterprise Edition. Operations delivers the infrastructure to allow businesses to achieve growth and make better decisions using scalable and contemporary ERP system tools.This book provides a collection of "recipes" to instruct you on how to create—and extend—a real-world solution using Operations. All key aspects of the new release are covered, and insights into the development language, structure, and tools are discussed in detail.New concepts and patterns that are pivotal to elegant solution designs are introduced and explained, and readers will learn how to extend various aspects of the system to enhance both the usability and capabilities of Operations. Together, this gives the reader important context regarding the new concepts and the confidence to reuse in their own solution designs.This "cookbook" provides the ingredients and methods needed to maximize the efficiency of your business management using the latest in ERP software—Dynamics 365 for Operations.Style and approachThe book takes a practical recipe-based approach, focusing on real-world scenarios and giving you all the information you need to build a strong Dynamics 365 for Operations implementation.

Data Structures

In this chapter, we will cover the following recipes:

• Creating enumerated types
• Creating extended data types
• Creating setup tables
• Creating a parameter table
• Creating main data tables
• Creating order header tables
• Creating order line tables

Introduction

In this chapter, we will cover the tasks required to write the data dictionary elements commonly used within Operations development.

Data structures in Operations are not just tables and views, but also include the ability to define a data dictionary. This is now called the Data Model in Operations. The data model hasn't changed much in structure since AX 2012, but is much more refined with many more features to aid development and minimize the footprint when extending standard tables and types.

This chapter does not cover creating extensions of standard types, but it does cover how to create types that allow your structures to be extensible. Extensibility is covered in Extending standard tables without customization footprint section of Chapter 7, Leveraging Extensibility .

Most development in Operations is based on patterns, even if we are not aware of it. For example, the Vendor and Customer lists are very similar, and are called Main tables. Purchase orders and Sales orders are also very similar, which are Worksheet tables; in this case, order header and lines.

Tables in Operations have a property that defines the type of table, and each type is associated with a particular style of form for the user interface. We could therefore consider these types as patterns. If we think of them as patterns, it is far easier to apply the recipes to our own development.

The following list is of the common table types, listed with the usual form design and their typical usage:

Table group	Form design pattern	Usage
Miscellaneous		This is essentially 'undefined' and shouldn't be used, other than for temporary tables.
Parameter	Table of contents	This is used for single-record parameter forms.
Group	Simple list Simple list and Details - List Grid	This is used for the backing table for drop-down lists. The Simple list design pattern is suitable for when only a few fields are required; otherwise, the Simple list and Details patterns should be used so the fields are presented in a useful way to the user.
Main	Details Master	This is used for main tables, such as customers, suppliers, and items.
Transaction Header Transaction Line	Simple List and Details with Standard tabs	This is used for datasets, such as the invoice journal form, that contain posted transactional data with a header and lines.
Transaction	Simple List and Details w/Standard tabs	This is used for tables, such as the Inventory transaction form, that contain posted transactional data, but at a single level.
Worksheet header Worksheet line	Details Transaction	This is used for data entry datasets, such as the purchase order, where the dataset is made up of header and line tables. The pattern has two views, a list view of header records, and a detail view where the focus is the lines.
Worksheet	Details master	This is a single-level data entry dataset, which is rarely used in Operations.

In this chapter, we will create types and tables for the common types of table, but we will complete the patterns when we cover the user interface in Chapter 3, Creating the User Interface.

Creating enumerated types

Enumerated types are called Base Enums in Operations, which are similar to enumerated types in C#. They are commonly referred to as Enums. It is an integer referenced as a symbol, which can be used in code to control logic. It can also be used as a field on a table that provides a fixed drop-down list to the user. When used as a field, it has the ability to provide user-friendly labels for each symbol.

Base Enums are usually only used as a drop-down list if we need to understand, in code, what each value means. They should contain a small number of options, and when used as a field, the list cannot be searched or extended by the user.

All Enums have to be defined in the data model before we use them and can't be defined within a class or method.

Base Enums are given the ability to be extensible in this release; the mechanics of this is covered in more detail in the There's more... section.

Getting ready

The follo...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright
• Credits
• About the Author
• About the Reviewers
• www.PacktPub.com
• Customer Feedback
• Preface
• Starting a New Project
• Data Structures
• Creating the User Interface
• Application Extensibility, Form Code-Behind, and Frameworks
• Business Intelligence
• Security
• Leveraging Extensibility
• Data Management, OData, and Office
• Consuming and Exposing Services
• Extensibility Through Metadata and Data Date-Effectiveness
• Unit Testing
• Automated Build Management
• Servicing Your Environment
• Workflow Development
• State Machines