Thankfully, Microsoft gave us a way in the Shortcut to the RTC that allows us to override our default Role Center with a specific one. NAV Consultants often have folders that look like this lying about for easy use:

If your organization also makes use of the Profile Customization level, you might have twice that number of shortcuts. Obviously, making all of these can be fairly time consuming.

To streamline this process, we created a NAV Classic Form that will generate shortcuts for any or all Profiles. (Note: There are also options that let people choose their role during the RTC opening process with some customization.)

Make sure the Locations are set up top (they default to common locations in Windows 7 64 bit environments, you may need to adjust them), select which Profiles (Roles) you’d like shortcuts for, and click Generate. You can also set the shortcuts to be created in Configure mode if needed. The resulting shortcuts tend to be fairly portable, as long as they’re moving between similar environments. This tool also handles custom profiles as easily as built-in ones.

This allows you to give IT staff, department heads, or anyone the ability to access the specific roles that are needed via easy to use (and easy to create) shortcuts.

Download it here: RTC Shortcut Maker Object

In our post, The Anatomy of a FastTab, we outlined how fields can be different Importance. To recap: Importance Promoted are shown in the FastTab bar when collapsed, Importance Additional are hidden behind the Show More Fields button.

In our example today, we’re going to make the Purchase Order page more tailored to our client. They have asked:

• To hide the Buy-from Contact field
• To hide the Buy-from City field
• To hide the Buy-from State / Zip field
• To show their Department and Project dimensions on the Invoicing FastTab “like the Payment Terms Code” so they can make sure those are always right
• Remove the No. of Archived Versions field entirely, even from Show More

To get started, we want to open up the Purchase Order page, and then locate the Customize This Page option:

The Customize Purchase Order window will open. Select the FastTabs option on the far-left, then press the Customize FastTab… button on the far-right (the General FastTab is selected by default, as it is first, so we’re Customizing the General FastTab):

You’ll now see the Customize General window:

You may need to resize the window a little larger to see everything.

Select the Buy-From Contact No. field. On the DropDown for Importance, select Additional:

Note: You can also click the Importance button multiple times to cycle through the options.

Repeat this demotion to Additional for Buy-From City and Buy-From State/ZIP.

As we mentioned, folks wanted the No. of Archived Versions field removed entirely, so we’ll do that here. Select the field in the list, then press the Remove button. That should move it to the left column:

Click OK (once) to head back to the Customize Purchase Order window. We’ll want to select the Invoicing FastTab and press Customize FastTab… again.

In this case, we’ll want to set the Department Code and Project Code to Importance Promoted:

Click OK (once) to head back to the Customize Purchase Order window. Click OK (once more) to head back to the Purchase Order, which will close and re-open now, with all of our changes:

Hopefully, this will help you and your team make the RTC a really great fit for the exact way you do business – removing unneeded fields makes the key ones stand out.

The best part about these changes is that they’re per-user or per-profile and will not be affected by most object changes, but that’s for another post.

If you ever intend to use any SMTP related functionality, such as the NAV Approvals system or the Serenic Navigator Email Notification Features, it is critical you install NAV from the setup.exe file in the root of the installation CD. You can directly access installers for all of the various functionality (Classic client, Service Tier, etc), but you should not. If you do, when the RTC tries to access the SMTP related DLL, you’ll get this charming error:

This message is for C/AL programmers: Unable to create an instance of Automation Server System._ComObject with CLSID = f9dae2a4-d2f8-37c3-86d5-e4ffe166d860 Retrieving the COM class factory for component with CLSID {F9DAE2A4-D2F8-37C3-86D5-E4FFE166D860} failed due to the following error 800703f..

I had a support incident with Microsoft on this last year – we checked registry keys, we hacked into the core of the system in ways that terrify me to this day. In the end, we uninstalled the entire Microsoft Dynamics NAV stack from the service tier machine and re-installed using SETUP.EXE. It was fine thereafter.

So, please, make sure you use the correctly provided installer.

However, many customers simply accept the way it is set up for them without understanding the logic of the system behind it. Let’s take a look at Vendors, Items, and Purchase Orders to look at some of the different options open to us.

A Basic Overview / Review

When you create a new Vendor, as soon as you tab/click off the No. field, NAV will assign you a new number for that vendor. That happens because in Purchases & Payables Setup the Vendor Nos. field was set to a No. Series. In our example, the No. Series is simply called VEND:

If we DrillDown on the VEND setting and press Advanced, we’ll get the more detailed No. Series screen:

Here we can see that all new Vendors will get a VXXXXX style number, starting with V00010. We can also see that the Last Date Used was 2/3/2011 and the Last No. Used was V0010. This means if we were to go create a new Vendor right now, it will be given V00011 as the next number.

Pretty simple logic: Each part of the system that gets a unique number has some setup field that controls which No. Series to use to assign those numbers.

Number Series Lines

Some companies are fine with their PO’s being numbered 100000 through 999999, and some are fine with PO-10000 through PO-99999. But, it’s also possible to incorporate some year (or even month) information right into the Purchase Order document number if you’d like, such as PO11-0001 through PO11-9999. For our example, the CFO has asked to switch to the PO[yy]-##### style next month, but not yet.

Let’s look at what we currently have for our P-ORD Number Series in our demonstration company. We’re going to want to look at the No. Series Lines:

(Note the top area “Breadcrumbs” bar: I went to Departments, Administration, Application Setup, General and clicked on No. Series)

For our needs, we’ve selected the P-ORD line and under Related Information, we’ll pick Series -> Lines:

We can see that, at the moment, we’re handing out 106001 through 106999. To hand out PO11-0001 through PO11-9999 is easy enough, but how do we make it take effect when the next month starts? Starting Date. Our new PO numbering would look like so:

This is pretty simple. We added a Warning No. of PO11-9990 so that the users will get a message as we’re starting to run out of numbers (if that happens). When 2012 starts to approach, as part of preparing for year end, we’d simply add more lines for PO12-0001, PO13-0001, etc.

Most people would primarily use date driven numbering on Documents, but if you were to do something similar for Customers or Vendors, it will give you a built-in reminder of how long you’ve had that business relationship.

Number Series Relationships

Our customer who wanted PO[yy]-#### had a team meeting and voted down the idea of using year based documents for Purchasing (although they loved it for sales). Instead, they’ve decided that each Department in the company should have their own Purchase Order number series, so PO-S-10000 is clearly a PO from the Sales team, and PO-A-10000 is clearly a PO for the Administration team. Despite having the dimensions already setup, they felt this would add clarity to their reporting.

How do you setup multiple Number Series with different formats to all be available at the same time? First, setup each individual No. Series for each Department (Admin, Production, Sales in our case):

On the P-ORD No Series, under Related Information, we’ll head to Series -> Relationships. Fill in 3 lines, one for each Department-based No. Series:

Now, every time a user in our customer’s system wants to create a new PO, instead of just pressing Tab or clicking off the No. field, they should select the AssistEdit (“…”) button:

This will allow them to choose which No. Series they would use for this Purchase Order, based on the No. Series in P&P Setup and the relationships that No. Series has:

We’ll select P-ORD-S and click OK, which then makes our PO have a No. of PO-S-10000:

Being able to bring these all together can make your records have lots of useful information packed into a small field. Consider your options, not just what is in place. Consider what you want to have to maintain at year end. Also consider what extra steps people may have to do on each document.

Serenic Navigator offers the ability to have e-mails sent to users based on documents and transactions being submitted for approval. Historically, an e-mail is generated for each transaction at the moment of submission. In every version of Serenic Navigator since 5.0 Improvement 2, there has been a new set of frequency based options that allow an organization to instead batch all these email notifications into a summary ‘digest’, listing all the transactions requiring action in a single email.

The options are outlined on the E-Mail Template Card under the Frequency tab:

The “Immediately” option causes an e-mail to be sent per transaction at the moment of submission. This option requires no additional IT setup beyond specifying what mail server to send e-mails through (along with creating user set up cards, e-mail templates, and e-mail actions).

The Daily, Periodically, and Weekly options cause individual e-mails to be queued up to be delivered at some future point in time based on the other settings. However, you cannot simply switch from Immediately to Daily and start getting Digest e-mails being sent out at 3 PM (for example) without additional setup (and possibly additional licensing, contact your partner or Serenic for more details).

Job Queue & NAS

The e-mails that are waiting to go out are stored in the E-Mail Ledger Entry, which is also where you can go to review past e-mails sent. In order for the system to be able to send out e-mails at a later point in time, something has to start the sending process. The recommended way to accomplish this is through use of the Navision Application Server (NAS) and the Job Queue functionality.

The Job Queue is a way of telling the system to run a process with no user interaction at a specific time or on a recurring basis. NAS is the engine that checks if there are any jobs in the job queue to run.

NAS must be installed on a server in your environment, and configured to work with your Microsoft Dynamics NAV installation. The startup parameter for NAS must be “JOBQUEUE” and the NAS service must be setup to Autostart using a Login with permissions to access Microsoft Dynamics NAV.

With that complete, NAS will run any job queue entries in the system, so we must set up A Job Queue Entry to send the digests out.

Here’s an example that will run once a night on all weekdays:

Once you have setup your Job Queue Entry just right, you must make sure that the Status is not On Hold, or the Job Queue will ignore this entry. To reset the Status to “Ready”, under Related Information, choose Reset Status.

Job queue frequency versus digest send frequency

Something that is very easy to get confused is that the frequency of the Job Queue process running is simply how often the Job Queue will check to see if any digest e-mails must be sent. But, the send frequency on the E-Mail Template Card is the deciding factor of when e-mails will be sent. So, if you specify on the E-Mail Template card to send out e-mails daily at 2 PM, but do not set your Job Queue up to run until 9 PM at night, then all of the 2 PM digests will be sent at 9 PM. However, if you set the Job Queue to run every half-hour, no digests will be sent out until the 2 PM batch, regardless of how often the Job Queue checks for anything to send.

To put it another way, think about putting out your mail in the mailbox. The Job Queue is how often and when the postal worker will check the mailbox. The E-Mail Template Card digest send frequency is how often and when you put the mail in the mailbox to be picked up.

Customization flexibility

This section is intended for implementers and developers to consider ways to adjust the mechanics of the system, rather than the user configurable settings.

When a submission triggers creation of an e-mail in the queue, the system tags each pending e-mail with a date and time that it should be sent. The calculation of this date and time is handled by a single and easy to customize function on the e-mail template table called CalcSendTime. Here’s how the Daily option is coded, for example:

The Daily option has a “Send Time” option (i.e. 2 pm). So, when an e-mail is queued, if it is after 2 PM, the “Send After” date is set to tomorrow and the “Send Time” at 2 PM. Otherwise, it’s marked to send today at 2 PM.

To create your own frequency option, such as every hour, you would need to simply add a new frequency option, and a new frequency case in this function that sets the “Send After” date and the appropriate “Send Time”.

You’ll also need to ensure that your job queue settings will support whatever new frequency you create.

Additional information

Multiple NAS duties

Based on personal experience, it is not recommended to have the same NAS run multiple NAS options, such as ADCS and job queue together. It may work for you in your environment, but be aware of the potential need for a multiple NAS scenario.

Mail server security implication

This section is for IT professionals with knowledge of mail server setup and security.

When using immediate as the delivery option, the e-mail is generated by the client machine, although in the case of the RTC, this may be the service tier server. When using any digest options, the e-mail is generated by the NAS machine instead. Make sure any SMTP server you have in your requirement is going to allow the correct server to send SMTP mail. Discuss your authentication options with your partner if necessary – Anonymous, Basic, and NTLM are the available options. I have had the most success with anonymous authentication and IP based filtering.

The ‘secret’ Frequency option “QueueImmediate” allows you to ensure NAS is sending the emails out rather than any other machines, but make sure to setup the Job Queue to run as frequently as you want immediate emails to go out. This option can be also used easily to handle the “Every x hours” scenario above.

Summary:

1. Activate the Change Log
2. Setup which tables, fields, and change types to track
3. Analyze the results

Turning on the Change Log

To enable the Change Log, we’ll need to go into the Departments area, under Administration -> IT Administration, and select the Change Log Setup task.

This will open a small form with only the one notable option:

That checkbox turns the whole Change Log engine on and off.

Setting up what to track

There’s a Relation Information action bar button hiding on that form (which you can see easily if you resize):

That menu will send you to the Change Log Setup (Table) List (it will take a couple of moments to open, as it is scanning your system for all known tables and fields):

In this case, the client wants to track anytime someone changes the Payment Terms on their Customers. We’ll select Some Fields under Log Modification:

Here’s a nice bit of confusing: Try to determine how you set the fields you want. In Classic, we could have both an AssistEdit button and a DropDown arrow, like so:

However, the RTC does not support that, nor were any Action buttons added to the Change Log Setup (Table) List to open it up. But, in the RTC, if you press Shift+F4 where you have selected the Some Fields option, it will open up the Change Log Setup (Field) List:

We’ll go ahead and resize that, then locate our Payment Terms Code field using the Quick Filter in the upper-right:

Check off the Payment Terms Code. Now when anyone alters the Payment Terms for any of the Customers, it will be logged who did it and when, as well as the before and after.

Reviewing Log Entries

Back on the Administration department, we have an option under Lists for the Change Log:

When you open that the first time, you’ll see a host of entries, even before anyone changed anything on Customers:

The Change Log records changes to settings to the Change Log itself, so if someone tries to circumvent any logging by altering the settings, the circumvention attempt will be logged.

In our example, we’re watching the Customer table, so we can filter our results to that Table Name (image split in two to show the whole list):

We can see:

• The exact date and time of any change
• Which user caused it
• What table number & name was involved
• Which record was involved (in our case, Customer 01121212)
• Which field number and name (Payment Terms Code)
• What kind of change (Insert, Delete, or Modification)
• What the Old Value was
• What the New Value is

As you can imagine, it’s very easy to set these to monitor critical elements of data. It is a very good idea to set these up on critical setup tables or critical financial components (like the Chart of Accounts). For some forms of auditing, such as Sarbanes-Oxley, you can likely consider this mandatory.

But, something to be careful of – this data can grow very quickly if you set it up on the wrong fields. For example, if you set this up to record every insert, modify, and delete on a Sales Order table, every time people are going about their normal work, they’ll fill this table with hundreds or tens of thousands of records.