Create an offline Development Preview – enable the in-client visual designer

You might remember this post:

http://www.waldo.be/2017/02/20/make-the-new-developer-tools-available-on-a-local-machine/

Well, back in those days, I might have forgotten a few bits ;-). Namely to enable the in-client visual designer. Well, there is not much to it – you can simply edit the web.config-file, and add the designer-attribute in it.. . With PowerShell, you can do it with:

$NAVWebConfigFile = "C:\inetpub\wwwroot\Navision_main\Web.config"
$NAVWebConfig = [xml](Get-Content $NAVWebConfigFile)
$designerKey = $NAVWebConfig.SelectSingleNode("//configuration/DynamicsNAVSettings/add[@key='designer']")
if ($designerkey) {
    $designerkey.value = "true"
} else {
    $addelm = $NAVWebConfig.CreateElement("add")
    $keyatt = $NAVWebConfig.CreateAttribute("key")
    $keyatt.Value = "designer"
    $addelm.Attributes.Append($keyatt) | Out-Null
    $valatt = $NAVWebConfig.CreateAttribute("value")
    $valatt.Value = "true"
    $addelm.Attributes.Append($valatt) | Out-Null
    $NAVWebConfig.configuration.DynamicsNAVSettings.AppendChild($addelm) | Out-Null
}
$NAVWebConfig.Save($NAVWebConfigFile)

So I added this to the original scripts.

So, what are the steps again to create a local environment from this wonderful “New Developer Preview”?

This is what I would suggest:

1. Create a VM with http://aka.ms/navdeveloperpreview (if you haven’t already done so..)
2. On that VM, execute this script. It will create some files that you need to copy to your own environment (wherever you want to install de preview – best is to use a new, clean VM). The files should end up on the C-drive, in the folder “C:\_Installs”
3. On your new environment, execute this script. That is going to install all the bits and pieces to your new environment. (You’ll see it’s going to execute the snippet above as well)
4. Enjoy your new local development environment!

Is there no other way?

Sure .. If you like to click al lot – you can do this quite manually as well. I suggest you look at the video that Mark just created.