AL, Brick, Business Central, Development Tips, Extension Package, Fieldgroup, How To, Information, Modern Development Tool, Phone Client, Tablet Client, Tip & Tricks, V2, Visual Studio Code, Web Client

Fieldgroup in Business Central

In today’s post we will see the usage of Fieldgroup and available options.

Today’s topic is very simple and straight forward.

Field groups are used to determine which columns you have available when you have a table relation to a field.

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Another usage of field groups is when we go to a list page in Web Client like the customer list, we have a number of views of the customer list.

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We have the normal list view, but there’s also two tiles layouts, the tall tiles and the regular tiles.  When I select one of those layouts, I can see the number of the customer, the name, the contact and two decimal values, which are the balance and the balance due.

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To have a tiles layout like this, you have to create a field group with the name brick, and then you have to specify all the fields you want to display. You can only have six fields in a tile and an image.

If the last field in your brick layout is media or media set field, in this case a picture for the customer table, then that will be the media set field which is used in the application.  So the positions of your fields are very important.

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It’s very important that your tables which are used in lists in the phone client and the tablet client, that you define a brick layout, because it’s a way that you can manage how, where and what information needs to be displayed.

Hope you find the information useful, and practice accordingly.

See you again in next post with some new topic, tips & tricks.

Till then keep exploring and learning, take good care of yourself.

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Development Tips, Dynamics 365, Extension Package, How To, Information, NAV 2018, Tip & Tricks, What's New

Extensions 2.0 – Dynamics Navision 2018

The issue with customizations is that they often introduce challenges when upgrading. It’s hard to upgrade a solution from one version to the next when changes have been made to the underlying solution. Extensions, and the new version – Extensions 2.0 – solves this problem.

Instead of defining customizations in the original source code, extensions are written alongside the solution source, where the integration with the source is handled with events. An extension can add new objects and extend existing objects that are present in the solution. The extension code is packaged in a file, which you can deploy to your solution. This allows us to upgrade the underlying solution and, as long as the events remain, the extension will behave in the same way from version to version.

To help you developing solutions for this new programming pattern, you can use the new developer tools to build, test, and deploy extensions.

 

In app designer

In the client, you can switch to the in app designer mode that provides a way for you change the look and feel of the client easily and quickly. In short, the in-client designer lets you define what elements (such as fields, groups) appear on a page and how they are arranged. The in-client designer also provides an interactive way to create extensions based on changes you make in the client. Some of the features include:

  • Adding a field from the source table to a page.
  • Moving a field to another place on a page.
  • Removing a field from a page.
  • Previewing your design in desktop, tablet, and phone clients.
  • Saving the changes for the tenant or saving as an extension package file in Visual Studio Code.
  • Changing the caption of a fields on the page.
  • Adding, moving, renaming, and removing an action.
  • Adding, moving, and removing page parts.
  • Adding new pages.

 

Personal and organizational design changes

As an end user, changes can be applied so that only the user who made the changes will see them. This enables users to personalize the pages for their role. Examples of personalization could include moving important fields to a more prominent position on the page, or renaming a date field so that it is clearer which field is the ship date versus the expected arrival date. Alternatively, as an administrator, changes can be made globally, so that everyone in the organization can see them.

Business consultants can also access the same tools to help customers make changes to their solution, resulting in improvements in productivity for all users. For example, they could add new actions to run custom reports, or introduce entirely new pages or page parts.

 

Working with the In App Designer

To turn on the In-App Designer, start the client as normal, and then simply choose the In-App designer icon in the ribbon on any page in the client.

 

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The Design mode bar appears at the top page, indicating that the in-client designer is active. You can now open any page, and start making changes.

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Choose More to display additional design options, such as adding a field, creating a new field, and changing the preview to another client type.

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To move a field, click and hold the handle in the field to drag and drop it from its current position to the new location, as indicated by the horizontal line.

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To remove a field, click the field’s handle, and then choose Remove.

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To add a field, choose the Field button, and then drag and drop a field from the list that appears to the desired location.

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To preview in another client type, simply choose one of the preview buttons.

When you are finished making changes, choose Stop Designing. You then have the option to save the changes to the tenant for all users, or to save the changes to a file that you can work on later in Visual Studio Code.

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You can see that Extension is deployed on your solution, check as below.

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Hope you will enjoy using this new feature of development.

Will come with more details as I proceed.