Hello.

Today I want to share some information about Acumatica customization.

Suppose, you want to change your pages not via Acumatica UI, but via Visual Studio. Reasons why you can have such desire can be the following:

1. Visual Studio is faster then Acumatica UI

2. You can put your changes under source control

3. You can easily exchange changes with your co-workers

Let's say you have following situation.

1. You need to make changes to pages ar301000.aspx and  pm301000.aspx and pm304000.aspx.

2. You need to add new page AP508000.aspx.

3. You want to include dll, which is named DS.dll.

In order to do this you'll need the following.

1. Create in your Acumatica instance folder CstPublished

2. Inside created folder create folders pages_ar, pages_pm

3. Copy/Paste into folder pages_ar page ar301000.aspx and into pages_pm pages  pm301000.aspx and pm304000.aspx.

4. Create new page AP508000.aspx in folder AP

5. Build your dll file

6. Create following file: project.xml, with the following records:

<Customization level="0" description="">
    <File AppRelativePath="CstPublished\pages_ar\ar301000.aspx" FileID="0849bd3b-c4ce-473e-8c82-c567112aa96b" />
    <File AppRelativePath="CstPublished\pages_ar\ar301000.aspx.cs" FileID="302c4089-6046-4a17-8411-1023315f5535" />
    <File AppRelativePath="Pages\AP\AP508000.aspx" FileID="b9e88968-7f36-4cfc-9383-caed8363c269" />
    <File AppRelativePath="Pages\AP\AP508000.aspx.cs" FileID="a1ce1918-f569-4ced-8a03-b5571dc26abb" />
    <File AppRelativePath="CstPublished\pages_pm\pm301000.aspx" FileID="8c174bf0-3143-4a86-83e9-c82704c9297a" />
    <File AppRelativePath="CstPublished\pages_pm\pm301000.aspx.cs" FileID="c435350a-89dc-455c-a9cb-6356987b2889" />
    <File AppRelativePath="CstPublished\pages_pm\pm304000.aspx" FileID="65b4f056-859f-463c-99cc-32a9cde11c7d" />
    <File AppRelativePath="CstPublished\pages_pm\pm304000.aspx.cs" FileID="46b0d39b-ba12-486a-be7f-6058a37cdca1" />
</Customization>

7. Create folder with the following structure:

   7.1 Folder CstPublished which has inside of it folders pages_ar and pages_pm. And pages_ar has all ar files, and pages_pm has changes related to pm pages

   7.2 Folder Pages, which has inside of it folder AP, and AP inside of it has AP508000.aspx and AP508000.aspx.cs files

   7.3 Put into folder file project.xml

8. Zip it and your deployment is ready.

Some pitfalls which I faced.

1. xml file should be named project.xml

2. FileId is guid, and each FileID should be unique.

3. All file and folder names shouldn't be capital. Not Pages_pm but pages_pm. And not CstPublished\pages_pm\PM304000.aspx but CstPublished\pages_pm\pm304000.aspx 

4. If you find other surprises with customization let me know.

11 Comments

• mazia said 

  Hi
  Do you provide development support to partners?

• docotor said 

  Hello Mazia,
  for free to some degree yes. And for money definitely yes :)

• Tony said 

  Hi, I got some questions:
  
  1) Is there something else to do after adding the file project.xml (I zip it as you said in the /CstPublished folder with the name project.zip)? is this correct or it should go in a sub folder?
  
  2) The .dll also goes in /CstPublished or in a especific subfolder?
  
  3) I got embed SQL querys in the project.xml, It will be executed doing this? o I'll have to run in appart.
  
  The thing is that I added both files "project.xml" and the zipped "project.zip" and in the menu is not showing the pages menu (sitemap), I wonder if it's needed some kind of refresh to get the changes.
  
  I'm working with Acumatica version 4.20.0935
  
  Thanks for your help,
  Regards.

• docotor said 

  Hello Tony,
  Inside the folder for customization following structure should be:
  Three folders: a) "Bin", b) "CstPublished", c) "Pages" and file project.xml.
  1. If you putted file project.xml into CstPublished folder, then move it one folder higher in the hierarchy.
  2. The .dll file goes to folder bin.
  3. It's possible to embed sql into customization, but I personally use two different files ( I mean customization file and project.sql which has all db changes )

• docotor said

  I attached screenshot of my customization. Let me know if you'll need something else

• Tony said 

  Hi again, and thanks for your reply It was very helpful. I had issues inserting the dll but I didnt notice that in the project.xml example was missing (I thought It was there xD).
  
  I have another question, those GUID for the FileID how are obtained? I'm working with powershell and I can't see a way to get those GUID corresponding for each file.
  
  Thanks...

• docotor said 

  It can be any new guid, which is not mentioned in project. I used http://createguid.com web site. In case of powershell I can propose either to read from mentioned web site, or as another option to make some simple program which will generate for you guids

• Fernando said 

  Hi Docotor!
  
  I have a question somehow related to this thread.
  Is it possible to include a ZIP file in the Projet.xml and then extract its content? Let me explain further:
  
  <File AppRelativePath="(...)\files.ZIP" FileID="0849bd3b-c4ce-473e-8c82-c567112aa96b" />
  
  We are facing difficulties in terms of time and path length while publishing our customization projects, so we thought that if we could just copy the ZIP file and then execute a command that would extract its content, then we could solve both problems at once. Is this feasible?
  
  Thanks for your help :)

• docotor said 

  I don't think that it's possible. Actually I don't know. I just can propose you workaround. In your destination Acumatica instance locate folder CstPublished, and inside of it put your modified pages. Then you'll not need to include modified aspx pages into zip file. Just keep in mind naming conventions. In CstPublished should be ar301000 not AR301000. As far as I know Acumatica engine will make analysis of this folder and will consider them as active. If to speak about your pages which you made completely by yourself you can put them into Acumatica directory straight away. I also assume that you can put in Bin folder compiled version of your dll.

• Ronan Masangcay said 

  I need to code on my local machine using Visual Studio (VS) VS2013 but will deploy the DLL on another machine that has an Acumatica ERP instance. Can I code in VS2013 in my PC and see the Acumatica objects (particularly, Data Providers) in my VS2013; my PC has Acumatica Framework already.
  
  Please let me know how
  
  TY

• docotor said 

  You can code locally on your VS2013 and then you'll need to put dll and pages into Acumatica customization and then publish it at your Acumatica instance.