Opening a Microsoft Dynamics GP Extender window conditionally

Today I came across an interesting request on the Microsoft Dynamics GP Partner Online Technical Community - here on referred to as the Partner forum. The partner wanted to know if it was possible to open an Extender window based on a specific Sales Transaction Entry document type being selected. In particular, the partner wanted to have the Extender window open only when the document type was an invoice.

Sales Transaction Entry window - Invoice

The first thing that comes to mind for most hardcore technical resources is to write some VBA or Visual Studio Tools code to do this. While not impossible, recurring to this type of customization to achieve the partner's request, quickly becomes cumbersome and inflexible as a solution if more and more conditions are needed throughout the application or even the window.

However Extender has a little known feature called Window Groups.

A window group is made up of one or more windows. The windows that can be added to a Window Group are Windows, Detail Windows, Notes and Inquiries. Conditions can be added to each window to specify when each window will be opened.

Let's see how this request would then be implemented in Extender:

First, we will need to setup the Extender window and associate the key fields that will be used against the Sales Transaction Entry window. As it stands, this is a very standard procedure. The following example shows two fields added to the Extender window needed:

Extender Window - Additional Invoice Information

Once the window is in place, we can proceed to create the Window Group and setup the condition as shown below:

Extender Window Group - condition for SOP Type = Invoice (4)

Note that in the Windows section we chose the previously created Extender Window. Next, in the Conditions section, we created a condition for SOP Type = 4 (Invoice). Now, in my books, that's what you call simplicity!

Until next post!

MG.-
Mariano Gomez, MVP
IntellPartners, LLC
http://www.IntellPartners.com/