Note – This article is applicable upto Dynamics 365 for Operations- 7.1 i.e. not applicable to 7.2 and above
Hi All,
Blank Operation as you may already be aware enable you to extend Microsoft Dynamics Retail for POS by adding custom logic that can be triggered from the Retail POS Register buttons. The way to implement Blank Operations in MPOS is different from Enterprise POS as MPOS is a modern app as compared to EPOS which is a windows forms based app.
So lets explore a very simple customization i.e. we want to open a URL on triggering a button from MPOS.
1. We would need to start with AX to add a button to the layout of MPOS. If you do not want to disturb the standard layouts its better to copy one of the existing layouts and then modify it using the designer. Please note the designer only opens in Internet Explorer so it will save you time by not trying to open it in other browsers e.g Chrome
<Update > If you can trust third party extension, you can install ClickOnce for Google Chrome extension to be able to open the designer in Chrome</Update>


2. Next we need to add this layout to the Store where we intend to use it, in my case I have choosen Houston Store
3. We need to modify the screen layout in the worker setup.
Next run jobs 1060,1070, 1090 to push the worker,store configuration and the new screen layout respectively to Channel DB.
Lets run MPOS SDK code from Visual Studio and check if the changes are reflected.
As you can see we have a new button in MPOS which can be used to invoke custom logic. Currently on triggering the button gives us a message “The blank operation identifier is invalid”
Now make the following modifications in the code.
In POS.ViewModels->OperationsMap.ts add the following line of code to register a new handler for the custom blank operation
Operations.BlankOperationHandler.registerBlankOperationHandler(“CustomOpenURL”, new Operations.OpenURLOperationHandler());
Next we need to provide the definition for the handler, to do this headover to Pos.Core->Operations->Add a new typescript file say CustomBlankOperations.ts and paste following code.
module Commerce.Operations {
“use strict”;
export class OpenURLOperationHandler extends OperationHandlerBase {
/**
* Executes the OpenURL operation.
*
* @param { IBlankOperationOptions } options The operation options.
* @return {IAsyncResultIOperationResult>} The async result containing the operation result, if any.
*/
public execute(options: IBlankOperationOptions): IAsyncResultIOperationResult> {
// sanitize options
options = options || { operationId: undefined, operationData: undefined };
var asyncQueue: AsyncQueue = new AsyncQueue();
var asyncResult: VoidAsyncResult = new VoidAsyncResult(null);
var url = String(options);
asyncQueue.enqueue((): IAsyncResultICancelableResult> => {
Windows.System.Launcher.launchUriAsync(
new Windows.Foundation.Uri(url)
);
return asyncResult;
});
return asyncQueue.run();
}
}
}
On running the modified app you should be able to successfully run the blank operation and see the web page in this case http://www.bing.com opened in your browser.
So hopefully this exercise will whet your appetite and for a deeper dive to more MPOS customizations I would suggest the following resources to try out in AX 7-
1. http://blogs.msdn.com/b/axsa/archive/2015/02/17/extensibility-in-dynamics-ax-2012-r3-cu8-crt-retailserver-mpos-part-1.aspx
2. http://blogs.msdn.com/b/axsa/archive/2015/05/20/extensibility-in-dynamics-ax-2012-r3-cu8-crt-retailserver-mpos-part-2-new-data-entity.aspx
hope this helps
-Hitesh Manglani
This post was first published at http://hiteshgoldeneye-techtalk.blogspot.sg/2015/12/a-simple-customization-in-mpos-blank.html