I think I just made the longest post ever on the SalesLogix Journal. It is a fairly complete guide on how to get started writing custom smart parts for SalesLogix in Visual Studio. I think it is a bit scary to get started with those but it is a must to provide rich functionality (for better or worse – but I think it is a good thing that Sage is not trying to cram every possible functionality into the QuickForms – their job is not to create a Visual Studio replacement!!)

Anyway, I might start writing most of the SalesLogix content through that channel so this blog does not look so much like a SalesLogix reference guide

As part of the many performance enhancement brought by this latest service pack, tabs are no longer automatically refreshing when a dialog closes. I think we can all agree that the gained performance is worth it But this has a few consequences:

• First of all, if you are using a quickform as an insert form, you are all good. Yes, this is one of these cases where using a quickform actually paid off! Congratulate yourself for the good choice.
• If you are using a custom smart part processed on the server side, it is quite straightforward, but requires a manual addition of this little piece of code to your server side script (right before or after closing the dialog):
  

  PanelRefresh.RefreshTabWorkspace();

• If you are using a client-side customization (and I do use those once in a while for interactive or time-consuming processes), it is only slightly more complex – you need to trigger a refresh from the client side. Assuming you are closing the dialog with this type of code:

  DialogWorkspace._dialog.close();

  In that case I had to use a slight subterfuge to get the panel to refresh correctly. I added a hidden (server-side) button on the page:

  <asp:Button runat="server" ID="btnProcessServer" CssClass="btnProcess_server" style="display: none" />

  And then in the code-behind:
  

  /// <summary>
  /// This is called by the Javascript when processing is complete.
  /// Close the dialog, and ensure tab is refreshed.
  /// </summary>
  /// <param name="sender"></param>
  /// <param name="e"></param>
  void btnProcessServer_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
  {
      DialogService.CloseEventHappened(sender, e);
      PanelRefresh.RefreshTabWorkspace();
  }

  Finally I just had to replace my javascript with the following to cause a postback and have the dialog closed from the code-behind from the button:

  $(".btnProcess_Server").click();

  Note that I am using the CSS class instead of the id, as the id is going to be transformed a bit by ASP.NET. It’s a bit of a cheat. There might be a creative way to do it entirely from client side, using the window.TabControl object (a reference to the tab workspace), however experience taught me creatively discovering hidden Sage Javascript API is a good way to waste my afternoon (and also get my butt kicked during upgrades!)

When working on web client forms you may have seen this error:


e:\inetpub\wwwroot\PhysicianLiaison\SlxClient\SmartParts\Contact\ContactDetails.ascx(678): error CS0246: The type or namespace name 'IContact' could not be found (are you missing a using directive or an assembly reference?)


For example this happens when you use an unqualified reference in a C# code snippet, such as:


var myContact = (IContact)BindingSource.Current


You can’t add a “using” statement so the work around is to qualify all references:


var myContact = (Sage.Entity.Interfaces.IContact)BindingSource.Current


To save on the typing, you can add a default import to your web.config file. Simply do a search for “<pages>” and add the following under that tag (or if you don’t see a <pages> tag at all, add it under <system.web>):


<namespaces>
<add namespace="Sage.Entity.Interfaces"/>
</namespaces>


Of course this can be used with your custom namespaces as well. If you are using extension methods to define business rules (as explained in Easy Business Rules with Extension Methods) it will let you use those too.

Here is a quickie… Several times I have made the mistake of shipping a web.config with debugging enabled (fortunately always caught it at the last minute so far). This has a horrible affect on performance because it prevents caching. It can also cause some serious memory issues under heavy load. So I made myself a big warning on the login page:

The code for it looks like this (in Login.aspx):

    </asp:Login>
    <asp:Label style="clear: both; display: block; width: 100%; text-align: center; color: red; font-size: 24pt" runat="server" id="lblDebugWarning"
                Text="Debugging Enabled in web.config - Set to False for Production" />
</asp:Content>

And under Page_Load, very simple:

    protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        lblDebugWarning.Visible = HttpContext.Current.IsDebuggingEnabled;
        System.Web.UI.WebControls.CheckBox rememberMe = (System.Web.UI.WebControls.CheckBox)slxLogin.Controls[0].FindControl("chkRememberMe");

By the way it slightly funks up the display for IE6 – but only when the label is actually displayed, so not a big deal.

This seemed like a no-brainer. SalesLogix is a Windows application, all the development tools run exclusively on Windows, and even though it does support a Linux database server (with Oracle) the vast majority of our customers are even running their database server on Windows. Nevertheless, Windows as a developer’s desktop has some serious issues (even more so for SalesLogix-specific development) and after realizing that I was spending most of my time inside of virtual machines anyway to work around 64-bit and IIS7 issues (and to take a break from Vista’s constant security nags), I decided to run a little experiment to see exactly how usable (or not) using Linux as a desktop for development of a Windows-based program would be. I loaded a copy of Ubuntu Linux on my workstation and started experimenting – I used the Linux desktop for email, web and editing, and used VirtualBox images for SalesLogix development.

The results? Well, they are in the title of the post! I don’t know if the Linux desktop will be a permanent thing on my home computer but it is definitely a big benefit on my work machine. It turns out that:

• Installation and updates is quite a lot easier thanks to the built-in package manager – no need to look for, install and keep up to date 2 dozens third party programs because everything is included
• The desktop has a few neat features that make it a perfect work environment – virtual desktops is the big one for me, it basically emulates additional monitors. The mouse focus is also nicer (you can get those effects with 3rd party programs and tweaks on Windows but not as well integrated). All in all the desktop is a bit more comfortable to me – could be because I was already quite familiar with it though.
• A lot of neat and actually useful toys that come with the box. For example, there is a widget to which you can paste images to send them directly to an image sharing site – it’s great for posting screenshots on the SLX forums. Or a sticky note app (there is one in Windows 7 too but it is not terribly useful for me as it can’t sync between computers). Again, because they come with the system I do not need to spend additional time looking for them and keeping them up to date.
• 32bit vs 64bit issues are non-existent – no “WoW64″ here. Oh, the sweet relief. I believe it was all worth it just to get rid of that nightmare.
• Git. Git is not that slow on Windows, in fact it is a lot faster than the alternatives. But the first few times I ran it on Linux it happened so fast I thought there was a bug and it was not picking up my changes. I am not exaggerating – a local git clone of a Saleslogix repo goes down from 30 to 2 seconds. The integration with the merge tools is also better (a lot better). So now when I need to do a big merge I bring the repo to my Linux filesystem, do the merge, and send it back. Words fail to express how much more pleasant this is.
• Warm fuzzy feeling from using an open source OS? Maybe

Now to be fair not everything is rosy… First of all be prepared for a fairly steep learning curve if you have no experience with Unix at all. To make things worse there are usually 2 ways to do most things – the “intuitive” way, through the UI, which takes a lot of clicks and is not always terribly reliable (though usually about the same as what it would be on Windows), and the “easy (not)” way, through the command line, which is very fast but requires you to know what you are doing. Even so, some operations require a bit of Googling and gentle coaxing – for example installing and configuring the NVidia driver for multiple monitors was not quite a point-and-click operation. A lot of the desktop functions are not extremely stable or polished – for example, the file browser crashes on me every few days, the UI stutters a bit when doing a disk-intensive operation (though it has no problem coping with the memory pressure of having 6 VMs running at a time, unlike Windows), Adobe Flash applications don’t always work fine, and because some of the fonts available on Windows are not present some web pages display incorrectly. And external devices are usually not “officially” supported – I have had good luck so far (I am actually able to customize all of my keyboard buttons which is better than what I could do in Windows, and my older scanner which does not have a Vista driver works fine on Linux) but I am sure esoteric USB devices or certain graphic cards might cause some issues. Well, these are the reasons I am still not quite sure I will keep it as a desktop OS for my home computer.

More importantly for work and development, while the integration with the Windows file shares is good, it is not perfect – sometimes I have to copy a file to my system, edit it, then copy it back. And I do miss Outlook (not that it is a fantastic program in itself – but the level of integration with Exchange is great). If I was using the Outlook calendar a lot I might be very unhappy – as it is I manage fine from my Blackberry.

My conclusion is not to encourage anyone to switch to Linux. Rather, an invitation to keep your mind open, as the ideal solution may not always be the obvious one!

PS: I opened an alternate blog at Nico’s Linux with the Linux-specific stuff, since it is not directly related to CRM.