The purpose of Extender is the ability to add “extra data” to just about any Microsoft Dynamics GP window.
We can add the data to the “main window” of a GP window, such as Customer Maintenance, or a scrolling window like the one in Sales Transaction Entry.
However, if you choose to add data to the scrolling window, the General Ledger Transaction Entry window causes some issues.
To watch a video explanation of this, see below or click here.
General Ledger Transaction Entry
Here, we have chosen to add data to the General Ledger Transaction Entry Scrolling Window. With that, we will capture Extender data per line. Notice that Extender defaulted in the proper Key Fields – Journal Entry & Sequence Line.
If we save this definition and then use it, we notice that our key fields are set properly and we can enter and retrieve the Extender Data on each transaction line.
The one thing to notice is that our Sequence Line field has decimal places.
It seems easy and straightforward, and it works well until you post the transaction and need to view the Extender data in an Inquiry window.
Now that the transaction has been posted, we need to create an Extender Inquiry window to view the data in that window – Journal Entry Inquiry.
We set the product & window, and then, using the Alternate Key Fields, pick the same fields as our Extender Window.
After creating this Inquiry and testing it, we run into a problem and Extender cannot find the data.
The reason this fails is because the Journal Entry Inquiry window uses a ##temp table and while the Sequence Line field IS on the window, the GP developers didn’t populate it.
Looking at our Extender Inquiry, we had noted there was a Sequence Number field available – let’s try that one.
Closer, but that also didn’t work properly.
While we do get the sequence value we expected to see, 16384, this doesn’t work properly either because our Extender data key field – Sequence Line – is a decimal value and has the decimal place and 5 empty decimal digits.
The Sequence Number field we are using is an Integer value – no decimals – and so while the value is “correct”, because we don’t have the decimals, it doesn’t work.
Is this a bug in Extender? No, it was a design choice by the GP developers that in the GL10001 table, the SQNCLINE field is a decimal. However, when posted, the data moves to the GL20000.SEQNUMBR field, which is a long integer.
Because the key fields for an Extender window are always string data, the conversion from the datatype would either have decimals or not, causing this issue.
Now that we’ve explained the issue, I’m happy to announce that with the Extender 18.8 release, this issue has been resolved.
Because the three Inquiry windows identified all have the Sequence Line field available, we added extra code in Extender to populate the Sequence Line field with the correct Sequence Number.
After updating to GP & Extender 18.8 and changing our Extender Inquiry back to use the Sequence Line value again, we retest this with another Journal Entry. We can see the Sequence Line is populated, and Extender can properly find the data that was entered in the GL Transaction Entry window.
