Printing footer on report last page without reserving white space in all pages (AX 2009)

AX 2009 (and prior versions) always had a problem in printing report's footer.

If you want a footer to be printed only in the last page of the report, in the bottom part of the page, you have to condition the last page print by code.

This works pretty well, except that the footer space is reserved in all of the pages, leaving a white space hole in all the pages!

That's a problem in report like Invoices, where you have a big footer with totals and so on.

Normally you would make the footer appear in all pages, so the white space hole will be filled, but that's not a proper solution for some customers.

I found a way to bypass this problem, and is also easy to implement.

The key is to programmatically compute where you are in the page, and how much space will need the footer, so you can move it down or eventually create a new page.

So, here the steps to accomplish that:

1. Create a programmable section in the report to act as your page footer. Place in this programmable section all the controls that you want to render as the last page footer
2. Create an empty footer section below the body that fetch your report data, and place an empy "Static text control" inside this footer (otherwise nothing will be rendered)
3.  Override the method executeSection of the footer with the code below

 public void executeSection()  
 {  
   int pageHeight, currentPos, i;  
   super();  
   if(!CustTable_1)  
   {    
     pageHeight = element.mm100PageHeight();  
     currentPos = element.currentYmm100();  
     if(pageHeight < currentPos + ProgrammableSection.height100mm())  
     {  
       element.newPage();  
     }  
     element.gotoYmm100(pageHeight - ProgrammableSection.height100mm());  
     element.execute(1);  
   }  
 }  

What I'm doing here is, if I ended up printing report data (in this case CustTable is empty) I compute the page height, where I am in the page, and how much space will need the footer.

Then you can print the footer in the proper position, or previously go to a new page if the space needed is not sufficient.

HERE  attached you find an XPO with a sample report


P.S.: My colleagues says that this problem belong also to SSRS reporting on AX 2012. I haven't seen it yet there, if you find a solution feel free to drop a line!

Enhanced table browser

If you find it hard to find fields on the Ax Table Browser, this tool may help you.

It will simply show the visible fields on the right, and you can check/uncheck those that you want to see.

If you experience some problem after installation, clear Usage data for the form

XPO download HERE

Create custom Alert for AX with Go to Source support

To create an Alert in AX, you can use the class EventNotification and its derivates

I got some problems using these standard classes, particularly in making the button "Go to source" work.

To avoid those problem, here is some code that may help:

 public static void CreateAlert(str message,  
               str subject,  
               UserId userId = curUserId(),  
               NoYes showPopup = NoYes::Yes,  
               NoYes sendEmail = NoYes::No,  
               Common record = null,  
               str dataSourcename = '',  
               MenuFunction menuFunction = null)  
 {  
   EventInbox inbox;  
   DictTable table;  
   EventContextInformation eci;  
   EventInboxData inboxData;  
   Args args = new Args();  
   List list;  
   EventInboxId inboxId = EventInbox::nextEventId();  
   FormRun formRun;  
   WorkflowRecordCaptionGenerator recordCaptionGenerator;  
   UserInfo userInfo;  
   inboxId = EventInbox::nextEventId();  
   inbox.initValue();  
   inbox.ShowPopup      = showPopup;  
   inbox.Subject       = subject;  
   inbox.Message       = message;  
   inbox.SendEmail      = sendEmail;  
   inbox.EmailRecipient    = SysUserInfo::find().Email;  
   inbox.UserId        = userId;  
   inbox.InboxId       = inboxId;  
   inbox.AlertCreatedDateTime = DateTimeUtil::getSystemDateTime();  
   if (record)  
   {  
     table = new DictTable(record.TableId);  
     eci = new EventContextInformation();  
     if (!menuFunction)  
     {  
       menuFunction = new MenuFunction(table.formRef(),MenuItemType::Display);  
       if (!menuFunction)  
         throw error(strFmt("@SYS104114",table.formRef()));  
     }  
     //Build the data to drill down to from the notification  
     args.menuItemName(menuFunction.name());  
     args.menuItemType(MenuItemType::Display);  
     args.name(menuFunction.object());  
     eci.parmPackedArgs(args);  
     eci.parmAlertBuffer(record);  
     eci.parmAlertFormDsName(dataSourceName);  
     //eci.parmDontUseFormRunFromMenuItem(true);  
     inboxData.InboxId = inboxId;  
     inboxData.DataType = EventInboxDataType::Context;  
     inboxData.Data = eci.pack();  
     inboxData.insert();  
     inbox.AlertTableId = table.id();  
     inbox.ParentTableId = table.id();  
     recordCaptionGenerator = WorkflowRecordCaptionGenerator::construct(record);  
     inbox.AlertedFor = recordCaptionGenerator.caption();  
     list = SysDictTable::getUniqueIndexFields(table.id());  
     if (list)  
     {  
       inbox.keyFieldList(list.pack());  
       inbox.keyFieldData(SysDictTable::mapFieldIds2Values(list,record).pack());  
     }  
     inbox.CompanyId = record.company();  
   }  
   inbox.insert();  
 }  

To use this code

 static void Job155(Args _args)  
 {  
   InventTable inventTable;  
   select firstOnly inventTable;  
   DEVUtils::CreateAlert("message", "subject", curUserId(), true, false, inventTable, "InventTable", new MenuFunction(menuitemDisplayStr(EcoResProductDetailsExtended), MenuItemType::Display));  
 }  

Sending PEC (Certified E-mail) with AX

A PEC (Certified E-mail) is not very different from a usual e-mail.

You just have to use SSL to secure the connection while sending the mail.

Usually I use the class System.Net.Mail to send mails with Ax, and this one has a useful property named EnableSsl that could work. But with a PEC, no, this isn't working.

That's because, to send a PEC you need an Implicit SSL, while System.Net.Mail only supports “Explicit SSL”.

 Reference: HERE

 And, as stated in the MSDN:

The EnableSsl property specifies whether SSL is used to access the specified SMTP mail server.

The default value for this property can also be set in a machine or application configuration file. Any changes made to the EnableSsl property override the configuration file settings.

The SmtpClient class only supports the SMTP Service Extension for Secure SMTP over Transport Layer Security as defined in RFC 3207. In this mode, the SMTP session begins on an unencrypted channel, then a STARTTLS command is issued by the client to the server to switch to secure communication using SSL. See RFC 3207 published by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) for more information.

An alternate connection method is where an SSL session is established up front before any protocol commands are sent. This connection method is sometimes called SMTP/SSL, SMTP over SSL, or SMTPS and by default uses port 465. This alternate connection method using SSL is not currently supported.

So, if you want to send a mail with Implicit SSL, you have to use a deprecated class from the old 2.0 .NET Framework, that is System.Web.Mail

Using this class is not difficult, and you can find a working sample down here:

 static void SendPECMail(Args _args)  
 {  
   System.Web.Mail.MailMessage  newMail;  
   System.Collections.IDictionary fields;  
   System.Collections.IList    attachementCollection;  
   System.Web.Mail.MailAttachment attachment;  
   try  
   {  
     new InteropPermission(InteropKind::ClrInterop).assert();  
     newMail = new System.Web.Mail.MailMessage();  
     fields = newMail.get_Fields();  
     fields.Add("http://schemas.microsoft.com/cdo/configuration/smtpserver", "smtps.pec.aruba.it");  
     fields.Add("http://schemas.microsoft.com/cdo/configuration/smtpserverport", "465");  
     fields.Add("http://schemas.microsoft.com/cdo/configuration/sendusing", "2");  
     fields.Add("http://schemas.microsoft.com/cdo/configuration/smtpauthenticate", "1");  
     fields.Add("http://schemas.microsoft.com/cdo/configuration/sendusername", "lmattiuzzo@pec.it");  
     fields.Add("http://schemas.microsoft.com/cdo/configuration/sendpassword", "password");  
     fields.Add("http://schemas.microsoft.com/cdo/configuration/smtpusessl", "true");  
     newMail.set_From("lmattiuzzo@pec.it");  
     newMail.set_To("santa@klaus.com");  
     newMail.set_Subject("subject");  
     newMail.set_BodyFormat(System.Web.Mail.MailFormat::Html);  
     newMail.set_Body("body of your message");  
     newMail.set_Priority(System.Web.Mail.MailPriority::High);  
     attachementCollection = newMail.get_Attachments();  
     attachment = new System.Web.Mail.MailAttachment(@"c:\file.pdf");  
     attachementCollection.Add(attachment);  
     System.Web.Mail.SmtpMail::set_SmtpServer("smtps.pec.aruba.it:465");  
     System.Web.Mail.SmtpMail::Send(newMail);  
     CodeAccessPermission::revertAssert();  
   }  
   catch( Exception::CLRError )  
   {  
     throw error(AifUtil::DEVgetClrErrorMessage());  
   }  
 }