Development Matters Blog

Merit Solutions, Inc., a 2009 Microsoft Dynamics President’s Club member and provider of Microsoft Dynamics business applications, is proud to announce the successful go-live of Mid-Continent Instruments’ new Microsoft Dynamics CRM implementation. Based in Wichita, Kansas, Mid-Continent Instruments is an industry leader in the overhaul/exchange, repair and manufacturing of aircraft instruments for the general aviation industry; the company operates on of the world’s largest FAA-authorized instrument overhaul and exchange programs. In an effort to automate business processes and improve customer contact management, the company began to look for an easily deployable customer relationship management (CRM) solution.

Mid-Continent has used the Microsoft stack for its core IT infrastructure for a number of years, and its IT team is very familiar with the Microsoft development and integration products and tools. Their employees are also familiar with the Microsoft Dynamics and Office systems, having used Microsoft Dynamics GP and many Office programs daily. “The capability of Microsoft Dynamics CRM to easily integrate with other Microsoft products, such as Microsoft Dynamics GP, Microsoft SharePoint, and Microsoft Office, was the determining factor in our decision,” says Cindy Highbarger, Chief Financial Officer at Mid-Continent.

Merit Solutions helped Mid-Continent review internal sales, service, and marketing processes to determine a way to automate business processes and improve the company’s responsiveness to changing market trends. Additionally, Mid-Continent wanted real-time access to information about all interactions with customers. Using the Microsoft Dynamics Sure Step implementation methodology, Merit Solutions was able to successfully implement Microsoft Dynamics CRM with real-time, two-way integrations with Microsoft Dynamics GP and Mid-Continent’s phone system. The Microsoft Dynamics CRM solution will provide Mid-Continent employees a more unified way to track customer information and sales data across the entire company.

When asked what she liked about working with Merit Solutions, Cindy appreciates Merit’s ability to implement new solutions in order to improve internal operating procedures. “Merit Solutions has always been able to fit new software systems to our optimized business processes, without making Mid-Continent accept less-than-optimal processes in order to fit any systems.”

Learn more about Mid-Continent Instruments.

FxCop is a free static code analysis tool from Microsoft that checks .NET managed code assemblies for conformance to Microsoft’s .NET Framework Design Guidelines. It will ensure that the specified rules are used in the source code.

FxCop analyzes the compiled object code, not the original source code, and searches for more than 200 different possible coding standards violations.

Sometimes it is needed to automatically remove FxCop related “SuppressMessage” attributes when they are no longer needed.

If you’re using Visual Studio Team System, then FxCop is completely integrated and when you exclude messages it automatically applies the new SuppressMessage attributes to the appropriate location in code.

If you’re using Visual Studio Professional edition, then you have to use the external FxCop.

It turns out you have to enable your project to recognize the SuppressMessage attribute by FIRST adding a condition compilation symbol.

To include this symbol do the following:

For C# projects:
- In Solution Explorer, right-click your project and choose Properties
- In the Properties window, choose the Build tab
- In the Conditional compilation symbols text box enter CODE_ANALYSIS

The next step you have to do is to right-click the error message in FxCop UI and select “Copy As” – “SuppressMessage” (or “Module-level SupressMessage”). Then you can simply paste the attribute into your code at the appropriate location.

While working with Microsoft Dynamics GP, I came into a situation where I was not able to open the Purchase Order Entry window regularly, following the path:

Transactions -> Purchasing -> Purchase Order Entry

Instead, I got the warning:

After researching on the internet, I found some instructions to repair it. I tried the instructions, but still nothing happened.

Then, I tried the following steps and it worked. So, if you get this message, try these easy steps. They do not require a lot of time or any new settings, and they might be helpful.

1. Open the Purchase Order Processing window, using the following path:
   Microsoft Dynamics GP -> Tools -> Setup -> Purchasing -> Purchase Order Processing
2. Open the Purchase Order Processing Setup Options window clicking the Options button on the Purchase Order Processing window.
3. Click the OK button on the Purchase Order Processing Setup Options window and the window will be closed.
4. Open the PA Purchase Order Processing Setup Options window clicking the Project button on the Purchase Order Processing window.
5. Click the OK button on the PA Purchase Order Processing Setup Options window and the window will be closed.
6. Click the OK button on the Purchase Order Processing window and the window will be closed.

Now, the Purchase Order Entry window should be accessible.

Microsoft Team Foundation Server (TFS) contains a collection of services including version control, work item tracking, and the EventService service. EventService exposes a set of events that performs actions such as sending e-mail or a SOAP-based Web service call.

In this blog, I’ll examine TFS capabilities to create and manage subscriptions. While I will be using Visual Studio 2008 and TFS 2008, most of this column applies equally to TFS 2005.

Built In Alerts

Alerts are notifications in e-mail when certain events occur in your team project. You can subscribe to alerts for yourself or for others, and can select to receive alert messages in either HTML or Plain Text format. However, Team Explorer has 4 different built-in alerts:

Using TFS Exposed Events

Alert subscriptions are stored on the server by team project, and you can add different alerts for each team project that you have permission to open. If you want to get notified for all new workitems, regardless of who they get assigned to, you will want a custom subscription. 

There are a couple of techniques you can use to achieve this.

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The new Visual Studio 2010 RC brings significant changes in the domain of the coded UI tests. You can realize that if you try to build a test project in this new environment as you probably get more than 1000 errors. There are a few errors that seem to happen a few hundred times each:

-’Microsoft.VisualStudio.TestTools.UITesting.UITestControlProperties’ is inaccessible due to its protection level.
- The name ‘HtmlProperties’ does not exist in the current context
- The name ‘UITestControlProperties’ does not exist in the current context
- The name ‘WinProperties’ does not exist in the current context

However, you can upgrade your project with an automatic upgrade script to move your automation:

1. Launch the Visual Studio Command Prompt from Start Menu > All Programs> Microsoft Visual Studio 2010> Visual Studio Tools
2. Run the script

   UITestUpgrade.exe < folder to upgrade>

   - The upgrade tool will fix all the changes listed below.
   - All the folders under the specified folder(s) is searched recursively and all projects under it upgraded.
   - If a project is under source control, the upgrade tool will do check out and make changes.
   - Tool will create backup folder with all contents of the specified folder

During work with the Receivings Transactions Entry window, we can be met with a situation when we receive 100 items in Canadian Dollars on WIREHOUSE site, and when we go through the Purchase Receipts Inquiry we get two lines, one line with receiving 99 at one unit cost and one line with receiving 1 item at another unit cost.

After receiving the items, the unit cost is translated from Canadian dollars into American dollars and rounded in two decimals. Also, it translates the total cost from Canadian into American dollars, and after receiving the quantity of 99 items at one cost, it rounds the last item to fit the total cost. That is why the last item is represented in a new line.
 
Look at the following example:
1. Open the window Receivings Transactions Entry like: Transactions -> Purchasing -> Receivings Transactions Entry

2. Enter the new Receipt Number and some Vendor related to Z-C$ (Canadian dollar) currency.

3. Click the button near the Currency ID and set the Exchange Rate to 0.9456270.

4. Enter some Item Number in the scrolling window and make Qty Shipped to be 100.

5. Set the Unit Cost to 1.54 and fill Site ID.

6. Now click the Post button.

7. Open the Purchase Receipts Inquiry window like: Inquiry -> Inventory -> Receipts

8. Chose the same Item Number as in Receivings Transaction Entry window.

9. Choose the same Site ID as in the Receivings Transaction Entry window.

10. Scroll the scrolling window to the bottom, click the expand button and the expected one line will be represented as two lines, one which displays 99 items bought by one cost and one line item with the same item bought by another cost. 

Working with Share and Branch options in VSS for Dexterity projects sometimes requires working with nested projects like on the picture below:

If we try to connect to the nested project through Dexterity, we will find ourselves in a situation that we cannot see the nested project. However, there is a way to load it, but there is no way to see it in the Projects window. Look at the following text.

Open the Dexterity project. Follow the path File -> Options -> Source Control. Click the  ellipsis near the Project Name. We are not able to see the nested projects.

Now, close the window Projects and enter the whole path Project/Project v.0.1.0 in the text field near the project name.

If we click the  ellipsis near the Project Name, the window Projects will open and we will be able to see the same list of projects as earlier. If we click the button Validate Connection, we will receive the following message:

But, this time, we do not follow this message and give up from loading data from this project on VSS. If we enter the proper name of a project as we have already done, the Dexterity will recognize it and load data from the nested project despite the message which warns us that we are on the wrong way.

Wheaton, IL — April 13, 2010 — Merit Solutions, Inc., a 2009 Microsoft Dynamics President’s Club member and provider of Microsoft Dynamics business applications and custom software development, is proud to announce the successful go-live of Oy Finn-Tack Ltd’s (Finn-Tack) new Microsoft Dynamics AX customizations. Over the last 28 years, Finn-Tack has grown to include three production plants, two warehouses, and 900+ retailers worldwide. In order to facilitate future growth and increase customer satisfaction across locations, Finn-Tack recognized the need to offer credit options to some of their customers.

After discovering limitations in their current system that would not meet their business process needs, Finn-Tack turned to the Merit Solutions Development Team. Through custom coding, the team was able to extend Microsoft Dynamics AX to enable a revolving credit option to Finn-Tack’s customers. This meant their customers could now make purchases as often as they wanted, up to a certain credit limit. It then allowed them to decide when to pay off invoices, with minimum monthly payment installment options.

Learn more about Finn-Tack’s Microsoft Dynamics AX Customizations.

The new Visual Studio 2010 RC brings significant changes in the domain of the coded UI tests. You can realize that if you try to build a test project in this new environment as you probably get more than 1000 errors. A few errors seem to happen a few hundred times each:

• Microsoft.VisualStudio.TestTools.UITesting.UITestControlProperties’ is inaccessible due to its protection level.
• The name ‘HtmlProperties’ does not exist in the current context.
• The name ‘UITestControlProperties’ does not exist in the current context.
• The name ‘WinProperties’ does not exist in the current context.

However, you can upgrade your project with an automatic upgrade script to move your automation:

1. Launch the Visual Studio Command Prompt from Start Menu > All Programs> Microsoft Visual Studio 2010> Visual Studio Tools
2. Run the script

UITestUpgrade.exe < folder to upgrade>

The upgrade tool will fix all of the changes listed below:

• All of the folders under the specified folder(s) is searched recursively and all projects under it upgraded.
• If a project is under source control, the upgrade tool will perform a check out and make changes.
• Tool will create a backup folder with all contents of the specified folder.

The Release Candidate (RC) version of Visual Studio 2010 has been released by Microsoft and is now available for download. From a tester’s point of view, Visual Studio 2010 Beta is a revolutionary step from Microsoft with a bunch of new stuff in Coded UI test for automation testers.

Visual Studio 2010 RC made some significant improvements of which I chose following:

Pause playback to wait for certain event

This capability was not available in VS 2010 Beta 2 and it was noticeably lacking. For example, it was impossible to wait for the form, message, progress bar to disappear etc.

This was accomplished with a modification of the UITestControl class. In the RC, you can use the appropriate UITestControl methods from the list.

1. WaitForControlReady() – This waits for the control to be ready to accept mouse/keyboard input.
2. WaitForControlEnabled() – This waits for the control to be enabled.
3. WaitForControlExist() – This waits for the control to exist on the UI.
4. WaitForControlNotExist() – This waits until the control ceases to exist on the UI.
5. WaitForControlPropertyEqual(string propertyName, object propertyValue) – This waits for the specified property of the control to have the given value.
6. WaitForControlPropertyNotEqual(string propertyName, object propertyValue) – This waits for the specified property of the control to not have the given value.
7. WaitForControlCondition(Predicate conditionEvaluator) – This waits until the specified predicate returns true.

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