Customer wants to expand Name field of Customer and Vendor. Does anybody has an experience with this or other solutions. They could use Name 2 but in most reports it’s not displayed and there are problems with Journals where Description field is 50chars only. Help please to decide what to do (and maybe you have a list of objects where Customer and Vendor Name (and address) is used) -
Hi! I would be very reluctant to expand the Name field, as the amount of table fields, Global Variables, Local Variables etc. you will have to change quite large. The same is true of the Journal Description fields. You then have to repeat the experience with each upgrade you have to do…[xx(]…and then you have to check the new objects introduced in each new version to see if these also need changing…[xx(]…every time I have come across this having been done, something, somewhere has always been overlooked. Note: The Name 2 field only appears on reports if it is populated, otherwise the FormatAddress Codeunit (Codeunit 365), will skip it. So…no Name 2 returns: Name Address 1 Put in Name 2: Name 1 Name2 Address1 If you can persuade the customer to use Name 2, this is a much better option.
I guess most secure approach would be a new field in Customer table, say “Full Name” Text[100] and let it validate Name := COPYSTR(“Full Name”,1,30). With this replacing Name on Customer Form you “only” need to adjust reports/documents where your customer really need this full length name (Invoices etc. ?). A list of all destinations for customer.Name would be interesting, and I mean how to retrieve such a list, anyone?
Hi
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A list of all destinations for customer.Name would be interesting, and I mean how to retrieve such a list, anyone?
To get such a list you would need a tool such as “Impulse Workbench” or “Developer Toolkit”
Even with Developer Toolkit it’s an very very big task. You must expand name every it’s being used, that is in sales headers, purchase headers (bill-to, ship-to, pay-to, sell-to, buy-from etc.). And all other tables where it’s used. And then you must recompile the rest. Also remember all places where it’s being used in functions etc. But that’s not the worst part. That comes whenever Microsoft releases a new version!!! If the actual problem is the reports, then I would go for the solution of modifying the reports (simply change Name in the Source field to Name + ’ ’ + “Name 2” in the name field). We stumpled into this problem during our Japanese implementation. The Asian double-byte version of Navision has expanded all Name, Name 2, Address and Address 2 fields to 50 characters to support the double-byte characters. But since we are running a world-wide version, we had to do it in all databases. And that would still mean lots of work. Instead we are creating a “Name and Address Translation” table to save all Names & Addresses with Japanese characters. And then we are using this, whenever it exists, to print order confirmation and invoices etc. And OUR problem solved…
I’m ok tu use Name 2 but how will you work with Journals where is only one Description field of length 50. And most of operations with Customers and Vendors are processed using Journals! Give an advice please ! -
Hi You could add a Name 2 or Description 2 field to the journal, in the same way that there is a Description 2 field in the Sales/Purchase Line tables, and then add the field to the relevant ledger entry tables. You would also have to add code to the relevant posting routines to copy the values accross, but personally I would be happier adding something like this rather than trying to expand existing fields. I would also be less grief to perform an upgrade. Hope this is of help.
I decided to cut off 10chars when formating Journal Description field (Name + Name 2). -