PrintVis is and has always been a customizable system. On top of the work done in Denmark, global partners were able to fine tune the system for their customers by making changes directly in the source code.
With the introduction of Extensions and AppSource a few years ago it became a different experience, since the raw source code modifications are no longer allowed by Microsoft who is providing the hosting platform.
As a replacement for the old source code modifications several new features were introduced, the most commonly known being events. As a partner you can subscribe to events published by PrintVis and change the behavior of the system.
PrintVis already has 270 events that you can subscribe to and most of these events are a result of partners requesting them.
How to request events?
To request an event we need two things. We need a functional business case describing what you want to do in the application and we need a code example of how you think the event should be called and where the event should be raised.
You can find a word template that you can use on our Developers Forum but you can also create your own.
The template can then be uploaded as a support ticket where it will be assigned to one of our developers.
Most events are added without questions, but sometimes we need more background and then we will either communicate via the support ticket, or in more complex cases setup a meeting.
When is the event available?
We publish all events in vCurrent, vPrevious and vNext. This sounds a bit nerdy but it means that the event is almost immediately available as we publish cumulative updates every month for the current and previous versions.
In the beginning of this process we got some feedback that we did not always make this deadline. This is true, or was true back in those days. We have since then improved our procedures and the execution and encourage you to challenge us if you were disappointed a while back.
Do I have other options?
You don’t always have to request and wait for us to add it. Business Central has many system events that come with the framework. You can always subscribe to validation triggers of fields, action triggers of pages or even hide PrintVis controls and replace them with your own controls.
Interfaces and API’s
On top of events we also started using newer features that became available in Business Central recently – like Interfaces and API’s. This is definitely a topic for one of our next blogs or Developer Open Office hours.
Do you want to attend the Open Office Hours?
You can find the link to the invitation on the PrintVis Partner Portal.