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Five rules about Business Central's document distribution architecture, verified against BCApps source and Microsoft Learn. - custom-document-dispatch-must-not-bypass-report-selections - document-print-and-email-actions-call-report-selections-directly - extend-find-entries-navigate-for-new-document-types - extend-report-selection-usage-for-new-document-types - transferfields-mirrored-fields-must-match-type-and-length Wired into al-data-modeling-review.md's worklist cues. Added a disambiguation note on the TransferFields article distinguishing it from the existing transferfields-skip-type-mismatch-can-drop-data.md (type-mismatch skipping vs. length mismatch, which SkipFieldsNotMatchingType does not affect). Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
62 lines
2.8 KiB
Markdown
62 lines
2.8 KiB
Markdown
---
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bc-version: [all]
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domain: data-modeling
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keywords: [report-selections, document-layouts, custom-report-layout, email-attachment, bespoke-dispatch]
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technologies: [al]
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countries: [w1]
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application-area: [all]
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---
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# Custom document dispatch must not bypass Report Selections
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## Description
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A codeunit that hardcodes which report to run (`Report.RunModal(MyReportId, ...)`)
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and builds its own email directly, instead of registering the document
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through `table 77 "Report Selections"` and calling its own
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Print/Email procedures, works for the one case it was written for — and
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loses everything the platform's registry provides for free. `Report
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Selections` carries its own attachment/email-body configuration per usage
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(`"Use for Email Attachment"`, `"Use for Email Body"`, `"Email Body Layout
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Code"`, `"Email Body Layout Type"`, `"Custom Report Layout Code"`), and
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`table 9657 "Custom Report Selection"` (the "Document Layouts" page on the
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Customer/Vendor card) lets one specific account override the report or
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layout without touching code at all. None of that exists for a document
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whose dispatch was hand-rolled: there is no registry row to point
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"Document Layouts" at, so an admin who goes looking for where to change
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this document's layout — the same place they'd look for every other
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document in the system — finds nothing, because the document was never
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registered there.
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## Best Practice
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Register the document under a `Report Selection Usage` value (see
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`extend-report-selection-usage-for-new-document-types.md`) and dispatch
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through `Report Selections`' own Print/Email procedures (see
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`document-print-and-email-actions-call-report-selections-directly.md`),
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even when the surrounding business logic — which counterparty to use,
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what validation must pass before sending — is genuinely specific to the
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document. Custom logic belongs around the call to `Report Selections`,
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not instead of it.
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See sample: `custom-document-dispatch-must-not-bypass-report-selections.good.al`.
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## Anti Pattern
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A codeunit that runs a hardcoded report ID and builds its own email
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message directly, with no `Report Selections` row backing it. It works for
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the default case, but the report/layout cannot be changed per account
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without a code change and a new release, and the document is invisible to
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"Document Layouts" — the standard place every other document's
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distribution is configured.
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See sample: `custom-document-dispatch-must-not-bypass-report-selections.bad.al`.
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## Source
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BCApps `ReportSelections.Table.al` (table 77 — fields 19–26 for email
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attachment/body configuration; `SendEmailToCust`/`PrintWithDialogForCust`
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as the registry-backed dispatch entry points) and
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`CustomReportSelection.Table.al` (table 9657, the per-account override
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backing the "Document Layouts" page) — both under
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`src/Layers/W1/BaseApp/Foundation/Reporting/`.
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