New Developer Tools for Dynamics NAV 2013 R2

Cumulative update 9 for Dynamics NAV 2013 R2 has been released.  This new version includes a powershell tool package for developers.

You can read about these tools in the NAV Team Blog, on Soren’s Blog and on Waldo’s Blog.

With every CU package we get an upgrade for the application.  I have a customer that is already running CU8 and I want to install CU9.  This time I will do that with these new powershell tools.

First step is to install the new CU9 binaries.  This I will do with the powershell scripts from here.  This will update windows client files, web client files, server files, outlook integration and click once deployment.  On my developement machine I needed to copy the RTC client files from the CU9 DVD.  The new model tools where not included in the KB RTC folder.

Then to export the Dynamic NAV objects.

I use my CU8 version demo database and export all objects to cu8objects.txt.  I export all objects from the customized database to cu8customizedobjects.txt.  I finally use my CU9 version demo database and export all objects to cu9objects.txt.

Open PoweShell ISE and navigate to the folder with the object files.

dir

Directory: N:\nav\cu9

Mode                LastWriteTime     Length Name
 ----                -------------     ------ ----
 -a---         14.7.2014     09:32  154023304 cu8customizedobjects.txt
 -a---         14.7.2014     09:27  120451925 cu8objects.txt
 -a---         14.7.2014     09:35  120463442 cu9objects.txt

Next I import the new model tools.

Import-Module "${env:ProgramFiles(x86)}\Microsoft Dynamics NAV\71\RoleTailored Client\Microsoft.Dynamics.Nav.Model.Tools.psd1" -force

I create a folder called cu8tocu9diff and execute

Compare-NAVApplicationObject -Original .\cu8objects.txt -Modified .\cu9objects.txt -Delta .\cu8tocu9diff

Processed 4036 objects:
 Inserted   0 objects
 Deleted    0 objects
 Changed    64 objects
 Identical  3972 objects
 Failed     0 objects

I see in my cu8tocu9diff folder that I have 4.036 objects and 3.972 of them are not needed.  I deleted all the files from cu8tocu9diff folder and executed

Compare-NAVApplicationObject -Original .\cu8objects.txt -Modified .\cu9objects.txt -Delta .\cu8tocu9diff | Where-Object CompareResult -eq 'Identical' | foreach {  Remove-Item (Join-Path .\cu8tocu9diff ($_.ObjectType.substring(0,3) + $_.Id + '.delta')) }

The result is that I only have the 64 delta files needed in the cu8tocu9diff folder.

Now I need the same 64 objects from the customized database.  I begin by splitting the exported object file into a new folder.

Split-NAVApplicationObjectFile .\cu8customizedobjects.txt cu8customized

I now have all 4.036 objects in the cu8customized folder.  I delete all unneeded files by executing

Get-ChildItem -Path .\cu8customized | foreach { if (!(Test-Path ((Join-Path .\cu8tocu9diff $_.BaseName) + '.delta'))) { Remove-Item $_.FullName } }

I am now in a place to update the customized objects with the cu9 changes.

Update-NAVApplicationObject -Target .\cu8customized -Delta .\cu8tocu9diff -Result cu9customized.txt -DateTimeProperty FromModified -ModifiedProperty FromModified -VersionListProperty FromModified -DocumentationConflict ModifiedFirst

Summary:
 Completed the update. Processed 64 application object(s) with a total of 190 individual change(s).
 100,0% of the individual changes were automatically applied during the update.

Details:
 Processed 64 application object(s):

Updated      64 objects – with changes in DELTA that were successfully merged with any changes from TARGET
 into RESULT.
 Conflict      0 objects – with changes in both DELTA and TARGET that could only be partially updated.
 The partially updated objects and the corresponding .CONFLICT files are added to RESULT.
 This also includes objects that are deleted in DELTA and changed in TARGET.
 Inserted      0 objects – that exist in DELTA that do not exist in TARGET and are inserted into RESULT.
 Deleted       0 objects – that are deleted in DELTA and exist in TARGET.
 Unchanged     0 objects – that exist in TARGET, are not changed in DELTA, and are copied from TARGET to RESULT.
 Failed        0 objects – that could not be imported, such as an object that is not valid or that contains
 unsupported features.

Processed 190 changes:

Conflict      0 changes
 Updated   100,0% of all changes

When I updated the customized objects with these 64 changes I got objects with a new version list.  The version list needs to be merged and for that I use a script that was written by NAV MVP Kamil Sacek.  The script is attached here as Merge-NAVVersionListString script and his scripts are available on CodePlex.  After copying the script to my base folder I need to import the new functions.

Import-Module '.\Merge-NAVVersionListString script.ps1'

And to merge the version list for the new objects I use

Get-ChildItem -Path .\cu9customized | foreach { Set-NAVApplicationObjectProperty -Target $_.FullName -VersionListProperty (Merge-NAVVersionListString -source (Get-NAVApplicationObjectProperty -Source $_.FullName).VersionList -target (Get-NAVApplicationObjectProperty -Source (Join-Path .\cu8customized $_.Name)).VersionList) }

I have now 64 updated object that I can import into my customized database and compile.  First I want to join all these 64 files into one object file.

Join-NAVApplicationObjectFile -Source .\cu9customized -Destination cu9customizeobjects.txt

When I imported the new customized object I got an error.  Error because I had new fields in tables that I did not have permission to create.  To solve this I begin by importing the URObjects.IS.37221.fob file that is included in the cumulative update package.  I accept the default action so all new fields should be merged into the existing tables.

Scripts are available to export and import NAV objects so this whole process can be scripted and automated.