Import/Export Print Management Settings

Print Management framework in D365FO is a powerful framework which offers versatile settings possibilities, but comes with a price of tedious maintenance, particularly when copying the settings among the legal entities or from one D365FO instance (for example UAT) into another (for example PROD). To overcome this problem, Docentric offers the following data entities:

  • Docentric Print Management Settings Package: to be used for migrating the settings between different D365FO instances.
  • Docentric Print Management Settings: to be used for Copy to Legal Entity scenarios and for some advanced scenarios with bulk modifications.
IMPORTANT:
For migrating the print management settings between environments please make sure to:

  1. Use the same Docentric version on both the source and target environment.
  2. Have the Docentric version 3.4.0 or higher installed.
  3. Use the Docentric Print Management Settings Package data entity.
  4. Export/import as a package.

For instructions please check the Copy between D365FO instances chapter below.

Why the "package" data entity?

Print Management settings may contain packed conditional queries and packed Print destinations settings larger than 32768 characters. Due to a known and documented SQL Server Integration Services limitation, fields longer than 32K will be truncated during the import. The solution is to export the fields with potentially large content into external files and generate the package with all resources during the export.

Learn more about "package" data entities and import/export process >>

To migrate the Print management settings between environments (Export/Import scenarios) always use the data entity with package suffix.
"Copy to Legal Entity" copies the data internally, therefore there won't be any truncation and you can use the data entity without package suffix.

Enable the Docentric data entities

When you install Docentric AX Free Edition or Docentric AX Full Edition, several Docentric data entities are also installed. Before being able to use them for the first time, you should refresh the entity list in the Data management workspace > Framework parameters > Entity settings > Refresh entity list button.

Once the Docentric Print Management Settings and Docentric Print Management Settings Package data entities are visible in the entity list, they can be used for the data management projects. Typical use-cases are:

  • Copy Print Management settings between D365FO instances.
  • Copy Print Management settings between legal entities.
  • Get the overview of all Print Management settings in one place.
  • Copy Print Management settings between customers.
  • Change the target print destination in bulk.
  • Change email settings in bulk.
  • Bulk switching from one SSRS report format to another.
  • Bulk switching from SSRS report design to Docentric default template.
To enable you to learn more quickly about all these scenarios we recorded short video tutorials.
See the tutorials >>

Copy between D365FO instances

To migrate the print management settings between two environments, perform the following steps:

Export from the source environment

In the source environment in the Data management workspace create a new Export data project with Docentric Print Management Settings Package data entity as shown below. Specify the XML-Element Source data format. Make sure to switch the Generate data package flag ON.

Start the export (Export now or Export in batch). When you see in the Execution summary form that the export is finished, click the Download package menu item. You will get a ZIP file with the exported content, which you will use in the next step for the Import.

Import into the target environment

In the target environment in the Data management workspace create a new Import data project. Click the Add file menu button, select the Package source data format and click the Upload and add button.

When dialog opens, point to the ZIP file downloaded at the end of the Export process. The information about the data entity will be loaded from the ZIP and displayed in several info and warning messages. You might get the warning messages about some missing fields in the staging table as in the image below (bug in the framework), but you can ignore them, because these fields actually exist and will be correctly recognized and used during the import.

You should get the following situation in the Selected entities:

Import the data by clicking one of the Import menu items.

In the Data management workspace create a new Copy into legal entity data project with Docentric Print Management Settings data entity as shown below.

You can narrow the selection of records to be copied by providing specific conditions, such as print management node type, document type etc. It can be useful if you want to perform initial trial copy or to copy only settings for certain module. See more in the How to filter Print Management Settings chapter below.

Specify the target legal entities (USPI in the example above) and click the Copy into legal entity menu item.

As explained earlier, when copying between the legal entities, data is copied internally, therefore even the long packed conditional Queries and Print destination settings shouldn’t be truncated. But if you encounter problems with the truncated data, then you need to use the Docentric Print Management Settings Package data entity instead of the Docentric Print Management Settings data entity.

In the Data management workspace create a new Copy into legal entity data project with Docentric Print Management Settings Package data entity. Provide the information about the source legal entity and target legal entities, then click the Copy into legal entity menu item.

List of all Print Management settings in one place

Sometimes Print Management settings maintenance can become complicated and you may need to get the overview of all the settings in one place. We recommend exporting all settings to Excel.

Learn more about exporting Print Management settings to Excel >>

How to filter Print Management settings

There are some situations when you would want to narrow down the range of Print Management settings to be transferred. Data Management framework allows you to filter the data in Export and Copy to legal entity scenarios. For example, to apply the Filter to the Export job, open the export job parameters form and click on the Filter field of the entity. This will open the dialog where you can specify the query to be applied:

 

In the example above, we want to export only the settings for Free text invoice document configured in the USMF company. The relevant settings are marked on the left image below and the result of exporting them to Excel is shown on the right image below:

 

Another useful filter would be to export all the settings for a specified module, for example Accounts receivable:

 

Note that node-specific settings (for example: Print management setting for one Customer) or settings containing node-specific condition (for example: query which applies to certain customers) might depend on the environment and/or legal entity. Therefore, it might happen that the specified node-specific ID (i.e. Customer Account) does not exist in the target system. In that case there will be import errors on the target system.

Common errors

If some errors occurred during import, you would want to examine them. You can do so by selecting the job you want to examine and clicking the Execution details. It will take you to the job result page, where you can click the View staging data button to examine the errors:

 

Error: Node specific ID (ID_number) for node type (Node_type) could not be found

Here is one example of this error as it can be seen by reviewing the staging data. Job was copying the settings from USMF legal entity into the USPI legal entity:

Error occurred while copying the setting for the Project invoice without billing rules document type, for the Customers node type and for the customer US-001. Error description at the bottom of the page states: "Node specific ID US-001 for node type Customers could not be found". This means that this print management setting was configured for the customer US-001 in the source legal entity (USMF), but this customer does not exist in the target legal entity (USPI), therefore the print management setting cannot be written into the target legal entity.

Error: Calculated Packed query checksum (checksum_1) does not match the stored checksum (checksum_2).

This is a common error if you use the data entity without the package suffix to migrate the Print management settings between the environments. Longer conditional Query might be truncated during the import, which would result in the corrupted Print management setting, so that the Print management form couldn’t be opened. To prevent this situation, we calculate the checksum of the packed conditional query during the Export and save it as one attribute in the exported file – that is the “stored checksum”, or checksum_2 in this example. During the Import we calculate the checksum of the imported query – that is the “calculated Packed query checksum”, or checksum_1 in this example. If they are not equal, we know that the query is truncated and block importing such a setting.

See also

Modify Print management settings in bulk in D365FO >>
Get started with Docentric Print Management Data Entity >>
Getting all D365FO Print management settings in Excel >>
Learn how Print management settings are stored in the database >>
How to Use Deployment Tools >>

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