Building ERP Solutions with Microsoft Dynamics NAV

Table of Contents

Building ERP Solutions with Microsoft Dynamics NAV

Credits

About the Author

About the Reviewer

www.PacktPub.com

Why subscribe?

Customer Feedback

Preface

What this book covers

What you need for this book

Who this book is for

Conventions

Reader feedback

Customer support

Downloading the example code

Downloading the color images of this book

Errata

Piracy

Questions

1. Introduction to Microsoft Dynamics NAV Architectures

Introducing Microsoft Dynamics NAV

Microsoft Dynamics NAV history

Microsoft Dynamics NAV architecture

Microsoft Dynamics NAV deployments

Differences between NAV deployments

Infrastructure costs

Performance

Growth of solutions

Upgrades

Performance and installation tips

Data tier (SQL Server Database)

Service tier 

Number of Microsoft Dynamics NAV service tiers

Server memory

Server CPU - cores and speed

Data cache size

Metadata provider cache size

Maximum concurrent calls

Maximum concurrent connections

C/AL performance

Summary

2. Configuring Microsoft Dynamics NAV Web Services

Microsoft Dynamics NAV web service protocols

Microsoft Dynamics NAV web service types

Page web services

Codeunit web services

Query web services

Using filter expressions in an OData URI

NAV web services configuration

SOAP Services tab settings

OData Services tab settings

Publishing NAV web services

Creating and publishing NAV web services

Checking NAV web services

Summary

3. Creating an Application Using NAV Web Services

Creating the NAV web service

Creating the consumer application

Reading NAV sales orders

Creating a NAV sales order

Testing the application

Using an OData web service

Extending the application for deleting NAV sales order lines

Using the SalesOrder web service (Page 42)

Using the sales order subform web service (Page 46)

Creating a cross-platform application

Tips and tricks

Summary

4. Using NAV Web Services with Microsoft Power BI

Introducing Microsoft Power BI

Publishing NAV data for Power BI

Loading NAV data on the Power BI desktop

Publishing your NAV dashboard to the Power BI portal

Microsoft Dynamics NAV content pack for Power BI

Summary

5. Integrating NAV Web Services and External Applications

An overview of the business scenario

Creating NAV business logic

Publishing the NAV objects

Creating the service layer

DALCustomers

DALShipmentAddresses

DALItems

DALPrices

DALOrders

Testing the solution

Solution deployment

Summary

6. Extending NAV Pages with Control Add-ins

A business case

Control add-in implementation

WinForms control add-in

Universal control add-in

Control add-in deployment

Summary

7. Programming Universal Windows Apps with NAV and Devices

Business case 1 - handling mobile informations with NAV 

An overview of Universal Windows Platform 

The solution - implementing the NAV business logic

The solution - implementing the integration layer

The solution - implementing the UWP application

Business case 2 - NAV and the Microsoft Band for healthcare

Business case 2 - developing the Band 2 application

Summary

8. Exploring Microsoft Azure and its Services

The Microsoft Azure platform

Azure Virtual Machines

Azure App Service

Azure Cloud Services

Azure Batch Services

Azure Scheduler

Azure Virtual Network

Azure Active Directory

Azure Storage

Azure Logic Apps

Azure SQL Database

Azure SQL Data Warehouse

Azure Analysis Services

Azure Service Bus

Azure Machine Learning

Azure Internet of Things (IoT) suite

Summary

9. Working with NAV and Azure App Service

The business scenario

Azure App Service 

Developing the solution

Deployment to Azure App Service

Summary

10. Implementing a Message-Based Architecture with Azure Service Bus and NAV

The business scenario

An overview of the Azure Service Bus 

Queues

Topics

Relays

Developing the solution

Configuring Azure Service Bus

Publishing NAV business logic for sales orders

Creating a Visual Studio solution for transmitting and receiving orders

Testing the application

Summary

Building ERP Solutions with Microsoft Dynamics NAV

Building ERP Solutions with Microsoft Dynamics NAV

Copyright © 2017 Packt Publishing

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.

Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the author, nor Packt Publishing, and its dealers and distributors will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by this book.

Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all of the companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.

First Published: March 2017

Production reference: 1170317

Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.

Livery Place

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B3 2PB, UK.

ISBN 978-1-78712-308-3

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Credits

About the Author

Stefano Demiliani is a Microsoft Certified Solution Developer (MCSD), MCSA, MCAD, MCTS on Microsoft Dynamics NAV, MCTS on Sharepoint, MCTS on SQL Server, and an expert on other Microsoft-related technologies.

He has a master’s degree in computer engineering from Politecnico of Turin. He works as a senior project manager and Solution Developer for EID (http://www.eid.it), a company that is part of the Navlab group (http://www.navlab.it), one of the biggest Microsoft Dynamics groups in Italy (where he’s also the chief technical officer).

He has a lot of experience in Microsoft Dynamics NAV (from the first versions of the ERP). His main activity is architecting and developing enterprise solutions based on the entire stack of Microsoft technologies (Microsoft Dynamics NAV, Microsoft Sharepoint, Azure, Cloud apps, and .NET applications in general and OLAP and BI solutions for data analysis) and he’s often focused on engineering distributed service-based applications.

He works as a full-time NAV consultant (with over 15 years of experience in handling international NAV projects) and is available for architecting solutions based on Microsoft’s ERP as well as for NAV database tuning and optimization (performance and locking management) and for architecting cloud solutions and applications.

He’s the author of various Microsoft Certified NAV add-ons (for example, the first cost accounting NAV add-on). He has written many articles and blogs on various Microsoft-related topics, and he’s frequently involved in consulting and teaching. He has worked with Packt Publishing for many books on Microsoft Dynamics NAV.

You can find out more about Stefano and get in touch with him by visiting http://www.demiliani.com  or via Twitter (@demiliani) or LinkedIn.

This book is the result of months of work and it’s a dream that comes true. Thanks to all the wonderful staff that has worked with me in these months (Rohit, Aaron, Rahul, Duilio): your support was unbelievable.

I would like to dedicate this book to my little daughter Sara: I love you, maybe a day you will be proud of me also for this! 

About the Reviewer

Duilio Tacconi is a senior Microsoft Dynamics NAV support engineer at Microsoft EMEA Customer Support and Services (CSS). He joined Microsoft in 2008 after working customer support with a focus primarily on the technical side of Microsoft Dynamics NAV. He was attracted to Microsoft Dynamics NAV starting from Microsoft Business Solution Navision 3.70 A and User Portal in 2004. Despite graduating with the highest score in Agricultural science, he is in the ERP circuit since 1998 as developer for several companies with Microsoft and non-Microsoft technologies. Currently, he is a subject matter expert in the EMEA region for RDLC reports and Microsoft EMEA CSS senior reference for Managed Service for Partner (NAV PAAS). Three times IronMan competition finisher, Duilio lives in Cernusco Sul Naviglio, Italy, with his beloved wife, Laura, and his new born son, Leonardo.

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Preface

I started my professional career in the IT world many years ago as a pure developer, and I’ve spent many years of my life developing custom applications from scratch with Microsoft technologies.

When more than 12 years ago I also started working in the ERP field (and, in particular, with Microsoft Dynamics NAV), I learned that when implementing an ERP solution, there are some business tasks that you can efficiently solve using the internal ERP programming language (C/AL for Microsoft Dynamics NAV), but there are also many tasks that require the usage of other technologies to be solved in a brilliant way.

During these years, I had the chance to be involved (directly or indirectly) in many different ERP projects in different functional areas, and I’ve always seen what I call a bad habit: the standard ERP developer (or Microsoft Dynamics NAV developer in this case) tries to solve all development tasks using what he knows best: the C/AL programming language! He forgets that outside the ERP box, there’s a world of technologies that permit you to have a final solution that rocks, and many times, I see solutions (especially when integrating Microsoft Dynamics NAV with other applications) that are solved using old technologies or in a bad way.

A typical example is integrating Microsoft Dynamics NAV with an external application: I see very often that the NAV developer proposes to create integrations via file exchange (CSV) too if the external application supports APIs based on web services, and only because he only knows C/AL.

The main goal of this book is to open the mind of the ERP developer and help him understand how to solve integration tasks in a modern (and efficient) way.

This is my mantra: not all tasks must be solved using C/AL. Leave C/AL for the internal ERP business logic!

In this book, we’ll cover many business scenarios that you can find when implementing an ERP solution (all of them come from the real world), and we’ll see how to solve them in a modern way using service-oriented solutions and cloud services.

What this book covers

Chapter 1, Introducing Microsoft Dynamics NAV Architectures, introduces you to Microsoft Dynamics NAV. This covers the history and the evolution of this ERP solution and helps you explore the different architectures that you can have when implementing a Microsoft Dynamics NAV ERP solution.

Chapter 2, Configuring Microsoft Dynamics NAV Web Services, introduces you to what Microsoft Dynamics NAV web services are and how you can publish the internal business logic to external applications using SOAP and OData web services.

Chapter 3, Creating an Application Using NAV Web Services, shows you how to implement an external application using .NET and Visual Studio, which interact with the Microsoft Dynamics NAV business logic using web services.

Chapter 4, Using NAV Web Services with Power BI, explains how you can expose the ERP data by using OData web services on the Power BI platform for data analysis and reporting.

Chapter 5, Integrating NAV Web Services and External Applications, shows how you can implement a real-world interface between Microsoft Dynamics NAV and an external application (a B2B web site). In this chapter, you will learn how you can publish the ERP business logic you need, how you can create an integration layer with open communication standards such as XML or JSON, and how you can expose a RESTful service to the external application that connects it with the ERP.

Chapter 6, Extending NAV Pages with Control Add-ins, demonstrates how you can extend the ERP user interface by using custom control add-ins.

Chapter 7, Programming Universal Windows Apps with NAV and Devices, shows you how you can create a RESTful integration service (by using ASP.NET Web API) that connects your Microsoft Dynamics NAV with custom application developed using the Universal Windows Platform. We’ll see how you can implement a solution for device tracking and monitoring health data.

Chapter 8, Exploring Microsoft Azure and its Services, introduces you to the Microsoft Azure cloud platform and its services. You'll get an overview of the Azure platform and learn about the main Azure concepts. You will also get an overview of the main cloud services offered by Azure that could be helpful when implementing distributed architectures based on Microsoft Dynamics NAV.

Chapter 9, Working with Azure App Service and NAV, covers how you can take advantage of cloud services in order to implement a distributed and totally scalable architecture that integrates the Microsoft Dynamics NAV ERP to external systems.

Chapter 10, Implementing a Message-Based Architecture with Azure Service Bus and NAV, covers how you can use another interesting cloud service offered by the Azure platform (the Azure Service Bus) in order to implement a reliable message-based solution (order exchange from distributed locations) with Microsoft Dynamics NAV.

What you need for this book

To successfully follow the examples described in this book, you will need the following software:

A Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2017 product DVD with a valid developer license to install the application on your own server

Microsoft Visual Studio 2015 Professional or at least the free Microsoft Visual Studio Community Edition version

An active Microsoft Azure subscription

Who this book is for

The audience of this book is essentially the following:

NAV consultants and developers

IT solution architects (mainly involved in implementing ERP solutions)

Designers of business applications

This book assumes that you have a working knowledge of Microsoft Dynamics NAV (mainly in the developer field) and a basic knowledge of C#, Visual Studio, and web services.

Conventions

In this book, you will find a number of text styles that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles and an explanation of their meaning.

Code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles are shown as follows: This will be done by calling a method in a proper Data Access Layer class.

A block of code is set as follows:

    public Dictionary GetItems()

    {

      Dictionary dict = new Dictionary

      Boolean>();

      LoadProductionOrders(ref dict);

      return dict;

    }

Any command-line input or output is written as follows:

SN.exe -T

New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, for example, in menus or dialog boxes, appear in the text like this: Right-click on the solution and navigate to Add | Class….

Note

Warnings or important notes appear in a box like this.

Tip

Tips and tricks appear like this.

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Errata

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