6 Steps to Upgrade Global Address Book Entities in AX 7

In this post I would like to provide a quick guide on how to upgrade customized Global address book entities based on DirParty/DirPerson functionality from AX 2012 to AX 7.

I’m purposely not explaining theoretical aspects of the differences in the Global address book framework from AX 2012 and AX 7, but you can always find it in Microsoft’s official documentation.The purpose of this article is to provide practical short and simple steps needed to execute during a Global address book entity upgrade to AX7.

After finishing code migration to AX 7, the customized Global address book forms and tables will be compiled successfully but will throw errors while working with it. You can perform the following steps to resolve the issues:

1) A new mapping to the DirPartyMap map should be created in the GAB entity’s main table:

2) Make sure that a relation to the DirPartyTable (or DirPerson) table exists in the GAB entity’s main table:

3) Create a new class in your model/package which is implementing DirPartyTableListExtensible interface similarly to DirPartyTableListExtension class:

4) Create a new class in your model/package which is implementing DirPartyToolTipExtensible interface similarly to DirPartyToolTipExtension class:

5) In a case where custom GAB entity’s type is different from default Party type (DirParameters.PartyDefaultPartyType), it is necessary to customize a defaultPartyType() method on the DirAppParameters table similarly to existing functionality:

6) In a case where the Roles fact box is used in the solution, make sure that the DirPartyView view and the DirQuery query are modified similarly to existing functionality:

After all steps are finished, compile changed objects and execute AX. The customized Global address book forms should work properly.

I hope this cleared up any questions you may have had regarding updating Global address book entities on AX 7, but feel free to comment below with any additional inquiries!

About the Author - Paul Tseranidi, PMP

Paul is a Microsoft Certified Dynamics Professional with over 10 years of extensive Dynamics AX experience from v3.0 through AX 2012, and AX 7 including full cycle implementations of Dynamics AX in different regions of the world. Having more than 10 Microsoft Dynamics certificates, his primary focus is on the development of applications and software modules, and project management processes of AX Implementations.