Sage Developers' Blog

Our recommended approach for deployment of new or customised Workspaces to a customer site is to create an Add-On (SDBX) package for it.
This approach makes deployment quite straight-foward. Eating our own dog-food has, however, shown that using the tool to create these packages is anything but straight-forward. To be honest, it’s quite painful and error prone [see my update on this]:

You need to remember the following files:
1 Workspace xml file(s)
2 Content Part xml file(s)
3 Content Part Info xml file(s)
4 Query xml file(s)
5 Workspace Layout file(s)

You also need to remember to set the correct file type for each file (particularly tricky for Layouts, which are actually two files and must be installed using the “resource” file type).
This is further complicated by the fact that many of the files will have the same names, and therefore folders need to be created inside the package.

In an attempt to simplify this in the short term (until we’ve included a proper solution within the desktop), I’ve created a simple application for packaging workspaces.
The tool will allow you to select any modified Workspaces you have on your system for inclusion in the package and will give you the choice of including multiple Workspaces in a single package, or generating a Workspace per package.

Note that it will only include files in your “Modifications” folder – if you want to include files from other AddOns (”Extensions”) or from the core system (”Default”) you’ll need to copy them to “Modifications” first.
The exception to this are Workspace Layout files, which will always be included if they are not one of the four defaults.

The caveats:

• You will only be able to acces this link if you are a registered Sage 200 Business Partner or Developer. Apologies if this causes you any inconvenience – if it does, please leave a comment and we’ll get in touch to find out what we can do.
• The tool will not be officially supported by Technical or Developer Support – again, please leave a comment with any questions, comments, suggestions or problems.
• The tool was created in my own time for my own convenience – and it’s been a long time since I was a professional developer… It has not had the level of engineering or Q/A rigour you would expect from an official Sage product (it isn’t one) and you should treat it with the same suspicion you would any other tool downloaded from the web!

Download the Installer

Update:

Looking back, perhaps I should have given a little more detail in my post about the purpose of this tool and the reason I developed it.

As I’m sure you’re aware, Sage 200 provides a mechanism for third party developers to package up their amendments or enhancements to the core system and deploy them across a customer’s site via a reliable and supported mechanism. This system, and the tools that enable it, were aimed squarely at our developer community and require a certain level of technical proficiency, as befits their nature.

With the introduction of our “Workspaces” technology we extended these same tools so that new or amended workspaces could be deployed via the same mechanism. Since Workspaces don’t require quite the same level of technical proficiency to develop, we have come to the conclusion that the tool is too complex for this particular application and that a simpler – more focussed – tool would be more appropriate. This is a conclusion we’ve reached over a period of time – using the tools ourselves.

I described the process as “quite painful and error prone” because that’s exactly how I’ve come to see it – Workspaces comprise a number of files and it’s very easy to miss one of them, so the whole process can take longer than it feels like it should. However improving usability is something we’re always keen on (and the approach we have in mind will be much easier than any standalone tool could ever be).  Of course, this takes time – we need to design, implement and test the improvements and then include in a scheduled release. In the meantime, we have something we’re finding helpful ourselves and we have the opportunity to give others the chance to use it too. I think it’s a great thing that we are able to do so.

Our blog is a space where we can be open, honest and do our best to help, so do continue to let us know how we’re doing.