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by David Musgrave (Australia) and the Microsoft Dynamics GP Developer Support Team (USA)

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Menus for Visual Studio Tools for Microsoft Dynamics GP 10.0

David MeegoGreat News for Visual Studio developers working with Microsoft Dynamics GP 10.0.

The Issue 

As I worked more with the Developer Toolkit and in particular Visual Studio Tools for Microsoft Dynamics GP, I found that the main support issue being seen was that it is not possible to add menu entries into the Microsoft Dynamics GP application navigation system without creating a Dexterity dictionary. This is mentioned in the following Knowledge Base (KB) article:

You cannot insert a menu item that is always visible by using Visual Studio Tools for Microsoft Dynamics GP (KB 922871) Secure Link

While creating a Dexterity dictionary to add the appropriate menus is not that hard for a Dexterity developer, it would mean learning a new set of skills for a Visual Studio developer that doesn't have previous dexterity experience.  It seems rather inefficient to force Visual Studio developers to work in Dexterity, when they had achieved everything else with Visual Studio, just to add some entries in the menus.

If the customization is sufficiently complex that it requires Dexterity code (maybe for procedure/function triggers, table triggers, or for alternate windows) as well as Visual Studio code, then there is no problem adding the navigation code into the existing dictionary.  However, this is not the case for many smaller Visual Studio customizations.

The Solution

The long term plan is to provide built-in support for adding to the navigation menus from Visual Studio into the next version of Microsoft Dynamics GP. 

In the meantime, I have created a generic Dexterity dictionary which has an API (Application Programming Interface) which easily allows Visual Studio Tools developers to create their own menus, sub menus and separators directly from C# or VB code. 

After discussions with the development and support teams, it was agreed that this code could be made available to developers to use with their Visual Studio based add-ins for Microsoft Dynamics GP release 10.0.  Due to several fixes and enhancements in Visual Studio Tools for GP 10.0, this menu solution will not be available for GP 9.0. The plan for GP 11.0 onwards is that this functionality will be built into Visual Studio Tools.

We are still working on getting everything ready for release, but it will be made available soon.

When can I get it? 

Menus for Visual Studio Tools for Microsoft Dynamics GP 10.0 is now available, please see Menus for Visual Studio Tools - The wait is over for the details.

Please add your feedback as comments, will this tool be useful to you?

David

26-Aug-2008:  We are looking for beta testers for this utility, if you are interested, please use the email link at the top of the page.

28-Aug-2008: We have enough beta testers for now. You will need to wait a little bit for the actual release now.

25-Sep-2008: Added link to release announcement blog post.

13-Oct-2008: Created post on Using Menus for Visual Studio Tools from VBA.

24-Jun-2009: Added Link to KB Article 922871.

Posted: Wednesday, July 30, 2008 12:13 AM by David Musgrave

Comments

jivtesh said:

I had this problem a couple of months back.

We had an application that integrated with GP, and had multiple menu items in GP.

When planning for an upgrade we decided it would be more efficient to migrate the code to C#. Everything worked out fine - except the menu's. We had to write dexterity code and create a chunk file, and all it did was add a menu option that launched the application. Definitely seemed in-efficient, but that was the only way to go. To make things simpler - we decided to move all menu items but the app launcher in .Net application.

# July 30, 2008 11:02 PM

maruf_d said:

Awesome! I have seen people struggling with it. This would be very helpful. Look forward to the next post :)

# July 31, 2008 1:30 AM

cftung said:

Great to heard that this available tools. By the way, GP menu security able to control the menu access for those menu created in VS tools?

# August 1, 2008 11:58 PM

David Musgrave said:

Hi Richard.

Great question.

When you create a menu from VS Tools you have the option to assign a security form to it. The new menu will now have the same security access as that form.

For example: Assigning the RM_Customer_Maintenance form to a menu will mean that it can only be used if the current user has access to the Customer Maintenance form itself.

Security can be asign at the time the menu is registered, or afterwards if desired.

David

# August 2, 2008 2:03 AM

David Musgrave said:

Posting on VSToolsForum.com

http://vstoolsforum.com/forums/p/524/1208.aspx#1208

# August 4, 2008 12:50 PM

lfdiii said:

100% needed here.  

This will be great to have.  Also, you would probably get more of a response if anon comments weren't disabled.

# August 21, 2008 12:23 PM

Russ said:

This tool would be very helpful.

# September 9, 2008 2:28 PM

Developing for Dynamics GP said:

Some great news for Microsoft Visual Studio developers who use Visual Studio Tools to integrate with

# September 24, 2008 8:38 PM

Sajeesh said:

Dear David,

This new innovation is really marvelous. I would like to take this opportunity to express my happiness and congratulation to you. The one of main constraints have been removed because of this new feature.

I hope we will get the LineFill event as well, soon in DTK :-)

Kind Regards,

Sajeesh

# September 30, 2008 6:16 AM

David Musgrave said:

Hi Sajeesh

The LineFill event was removed from v9.0 as it would not have worked.

At the time when Dexterity executes the LineFill event, the contents of the scrolling window (grid) are not yet populated.  In Dexterity we have to access the data from the table buffer.  As v9.0 of Visual Studio Tools did not have table buffer support, the LineFill event would not have been of any use.  Because of this it was removed from the v9.0 release.

When table buffer support was added into v10.0 of Visual Studio Tools, the LineFill event was overlooked and not added back.  Development are aware of this and hopefully will we see it added back soon.

David

# September 30, 2008 8:37 AM

Developing for Dynamics GP said:

I have been involved in the Great Plains world now since 1994. During that time I have become known for

# October 13, 2008 3:39 AM

Rayzback said:

Awsome! Being one who does not have time to dive into Dexterity. In just a couple of hours I was able to take all of the scattered menu handlers for our custom .net apps and turn them into a professional and easy to find menu items. Thank You!

# October 29, 2008 11:37 PM

Triven said:

Please let me know if we can have this in GP 9.0 - menus

# November 8, 2008 8:19 AM

David Musgrave said:

Hi Triven

The Menus for Visual Studio Tools has only been released for v10.0.  For v9.0 you will still need to create your own Dexterity dictionary. For v11.0, the plan is to have a different method built into Visual Studio Tools.

David

# November 9, 2008 8:53 PM

David Musgrave said:

Posting from Jivtesh Singh

http://www.jivtesh.com/2009/03/visual-studio-tools-for-dynamics-gp.html

# March 29, 2009 8:47 PM
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