Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2016 server and development environment can be installed on a computer running Windows 7 Home edition or higher versions. But the recommended minimum requirement is Windows 7 Service Pack 1 Professional edition. Some of the features described in this book are supported only on Windows 7.1 Professional or higher versions.

If you need detailed instructions on system requirements, refer to the MSDN article System Requirements for Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2016. Further in this book, we will assume that the minimum requirements described in this article are satisfied.

We chose to install Dynamics NAV 2016 components required for the recipes in this book. Extended testability options, automated data capture system, and click Once installation are not covered in the book and remain optional.

The help server must be installed if you intend to use local help files. If you prefer looking for information on MSDN or online communities, it can be skipped. All reference documents installed along with the help server are available online.

Installation will create and start a service named DynamicsNAV90. You can find it in your computer's services list as Microsoft Dynamics NAV Server [DynamicsNAV90].

To verify the service installation, run the Dynamics NAV 2016 Client from the Start menu, click Select Server in the application menu, and enter the server address:

localhost:7046/DynamicsNAV90

The web server components installation creates a web site called DynamicsNAV90 in the Internet Information Services.

Dynamics NAV can now be accessed in a web browser on the following address:

http://localhost:8080/DynamicsNAV90

In most cases all triggers supported by an object are available in the C/AL code editor as soon as the new object is created. There are several exceptions when a trigger must be explicitly declared as a function having specific signature, but these triggers are outside the material covered in this chapter. All application triggers we are going to work with will be created by the C/SIDE without developer's intervention.

All NAV objects that can execute C/AL code (that is, all objects except Menu Suite), have the Documentation section. This object section is often referred to as a trigger, and looks like a function in the code editor, although it is never executed. Documentation is used to comment the object - usually comments applicable to the object in general are placed here.

Codeunit objects support only one trigger OnRun that is called when the object is executed. In Step 7 we run the codeunit manually from the object designer. In the steps, Step 8 to Step 10, the same trigger fires when execution of the codeunit is initiated from another codeunit's OnRun trigger. This way, triggers can be chained, when the execution of an object can cause another trigger to fire.

To run the codeunit we use the system function CODEUNIT.RUN which takes the codeunit ID as the parameter. It can simply be a number (50000). Or we can refer to the codeunit by its name, making the code more human-readable.

Unlike many other programming languages, like C++, C# or Java, variables and functions declaration in C/SIDE are separated from the program text. All global and local declarations are accessed in the code editor via the main menu.

Variables and text constants declared in the C/AL Locals can be used only in the function where they are created. C/AL Globals declarations are accessible from any function in the same object.

Functions can only be created in the C/AL Globals and can be accessed from anywhere in the same object. Function do not have to return a value and can be declared without any return type. If you want the function to return a result, you must assign a return type to it and use the EXIT statement to return a value to the caller function.

In the steps from Step 7 to Step 11 we demonstrate how IntelliSence integrates with the NAV development environment. IntelliSense is a Microsoft code completion feature widely used in Visual Studio. It aides a developer in coding by suggesting possible variable and function names, function parameters, and many other things. Such code hints speed up coding and reduce the risk of typos, and many plain coding mistakes.

Each of the two lines at the beginning of this exercise contains an error. In the first line we are assigning a date to an integer variable, and the second line is missing an apostrophe closing the text constant. When an object is compiled, only the first error is shown if the compilation breaks. Errors must be fixed one by one.

In Step 5 we are saving the object without compiling. This option is often used in the middle of the development process, when the object is incomplete and not syntactically correct yet.

It is not necessary to open objects in the code editor to compile them one at a time. It is possible to compile multiple objects in one batch. Select all objects you want to compile in the object designer and press F11 - it will run compilation for all selected objects. If several objects are selected and there are compilation errors in any of them, the list of errors will be displayed in a summary table.

First let us export an object into a text file and edit it outside C/SIDE editor.

When importing application objects in plain text format, C/SIDE does not check objects for possible conflicts. Merging code must be done manually by the developer.

Binary files are automatically checked for conflicts during the import if there are objects with the same ID in the database and in the file being imported. If both files have the Modified flag checked, this is considered as a conflict that must be resolved in the Import Worksheet dialog. In the Action field, you can choose how to handle conflicting objects. Possible options are:

The SplitNumber function, described in Step 1 through Step 8, uses a FOR...DOWNTO loop with a loop control variable to iterate on all digits in the BigInteger number, starting from the last digit. In each step the number is divided by 10 using the integer division function DIV. The modulus division function MOD returns the remainder of this division that is placed in the corresponding element of an array.

The Dimensions property of the parameter Digits tells that this variable is an array consisting of 11 elements (value of Dimensions is the number of elements. A variable with undefined dimensions is a scalar).

When a function is called, it can receive arguments either by value or by reference. Var checkmark in the parameter declaration means that the argument will be passed to the function by reference, and all changes made to the Digits array in the function SplitNumber will be reflected in the function VerifyCheckSum that calls SplitNumber. Arrays cannot be function return values in C/AL, so passing an array variable by reference is the only way to send arrays between functions.

The VerifyCheckSum function defined in Step 9 to Step 13 calls the helper function SplitNumber and then uses the same loop type, but iterates from the first digit to the last (FOR 1 TO 10). This loop computes the checksum, which is compared to the last digit of the account number. If the two values match, the checksum is correct. Finally, the function returns the Boolean value conveying the verification result, TRUE or FALSE.

Based on this result, the OnRun function in the codeunit will display one of the two text constants in a message. In the given example, the checksum is incorrect, so the message will look like this:

To see the message for the correct result, replace the last digit in the account number with 3. The correct number is 79927398713.

Messages shown in the dialog box are declared as text constants in Step 16. The same text can be written within C/AL code without declaring constants, but in general, it is recommended to use named constants, because they allow to store text values in different languages and easily switch to any available language layer. Hardcoded text values in the C/AL code cannot provide such flexibility.

A record is a complex data type. Variable declared as record refers to a table in the database. A variable contains a single table record and can move forward and backward through the recordset. A C/AL record resembles an object in object-oriented languages, although they are not exactly the same. You can call record methods and read fields using dot notation.

For example below are valid statements with the Customer record variable:

Customer.Name := 'New Customer'; 
IF Customer.Balance <= 0 THEN 
  MESSAGE 

The variable we just declared refers to the table Sales Line, which stores all open sales documents lines.

Since we want to calculate the sales amount in a certain period, first of all we need to define the date range for the calculation.

The first line in the code example finds the starting date of the period. In this calculation we refer to the system-defined global variable WORKDATE. If you are an experienced NAV user, you know what a workdate is; this is the default date for all documents created in the system. It does not always match the calendar date, so in the application code we use WORKDATE as the pivot date. Another system variable TODAY stores the actual calendar date, but it is used much less frequently than workdate.

Workdate is the last date of the period we want to analyze. To find the first date, use the CALCDATE function. It calculates a date based on the formula and the reference date. CALCDATE('<-1M>',WORKDATE) means that the resulting date will be one month earlier than the workdate. In the NAV 9.0 demo database workdate is 25.01.2017, so the result of this CALCDATE will be 25.12.2016.

The next line sets a filter on the SalesLine table. Filtering is used in C/AL to search for records corresponding to given criteria. There are two functions to apply filters to a table: SETFILTER and SETRANGE. Both take the field name to which the filter is applied, as the first parameter.

SETRANGE can filter all values within a given range or a single value. In the code example we use it to filter sales lines where the customer code is '10000'. Then we apply one more filter on the Posting Date field to filter out all dates less than StartingDate and greater than EndingDate.

Another filter is applied on the Document Type field:

SalesLine.SETFILTER( 
  "Document Type",'%1|%2', 
  SalesLine."Document Type"::Order, 
  SalesLine."Document Type"::Invoice); 

We want to see only invoices and orders in the final result, and we can combine these two values in a filter with the SETFILTER function. '%1|%2' is a combination of two placeholders that will be replaced with actual filter values in the runtime.

The last database statement in this example is the CALCSUMS function. SETRANGE itself does not change the state of the record variable - it only prepares filters for the following records search or calculation. Now CALCSUMS will calculate the result based on the record filters. It will find the sum of the Line Amount field in all records within the filtered range.

Only sales lines in which all filtering conditions are satisfied will be taken into account:

Finally, we will show the result as a message with the MESSAGE function. Placeholders "%1" in the message text will be replaced with the second parameter of the function (SalesLine."Line Amount"):

The NAV User Password authentication method requires an SSL certificate that must be installed on both server and client computers. For testing purposes, you can generate a self-signed certificate with the New-SelfSignedCertificateEx PowerShell cmdlet that can be downloaded from Microsoft TechNet.

Changing the authentication method requires a number of changes in configuration on both the server and client side.

Several prerequisites must be met before you can connect to your NAV server over the Web.

In Step 1 through Step 8 we generate a self-signed SSL certificate the same way we did in the previous recipe of this chapter, Configuring NAV Server. The certificate is required whenever we need to establish a secure connection with authentication type other than Windows.

After running the New-SelfSignedCertificateEx cmdlet, your new certificate is created in the LocalMachine certificate store. A client computer connecting to the server must hold a copy of this certificate. To copy it to the client PC or mobile device, you need to export the certificate file. Step 9 exports the security certificate into a file that will be installed on client. A new NAV Server instance is created and configured in Step 10 to Step 17. We need two service instances here to redirect web requests to a separate service and leave Windows users unaffected. The user login type in NAV is defined by the server-side setup, and once a service is configured for NAVUserPassword credential type, it cannot authenticate users with the Windows credential type; they will receive a "Protocol mismatch" error. Since web users are outside of the corporate domain and cannot access the server with Windows credentials, we must change the authentication type they use. But we still want domain users to be able to login with their Windows domain account. And this is why we need the second service instance. Users within domain will be connecting to the service DynamicsNAV90, nothing will change for them. On the other hand, web requests will be redirected to the WebLogin service. Since both services point to the same database, all users will work with the same data and application.

Our front-end is the web server published by the Internet Information Services (IIS), and the IIS service must forward all incoming requests to the correct back-end service. Now let us configure the web service.

The final setup on the web server side is to configure authorization requests from IIS to the NAV instance that will serve them.

With the web server configuration complete, you can connect to the same service from a mobile device running NAV Tablet Client or Phone Client.

Your mobile device must have the SSL certificate registered, same as the Windows Role-Tailored Client. To install the certificate on the mobile device:

After the certificate is successfully installed, you will see a confirmation. Then locate the Dynamics NAV phone client shortcut in your applications and click it. You will be prompted to enter the service name:

Enter the server name and the web instance name and connect to the server. You will be asked to enter a user name and password. These are the name and the password of the user created in the previous step.

Now you are connected to the NAV server: