Development Guidance

Forum|Forum|17 years ago
October 29, 2008
15 replies
1448 views

Hi.

I work with Microsoft NAV (formerly Navision) and a requirement has come up to somehow interface NAV with InDesign. The task is to produce (fairly simple) product tags based on data within NAV (item number, description, dimensions, price, etc.) The tags are currently being produce 'by hand'.

InDesign has an obviously rich and varied development environment - so much so that it's a bit overwhelming to the uninitiated. What I am looking for are some 'high-level' suggestions on how to 'marry' NAV with InDesign. By high-level, I mean just point me in the right direction and I'll do the had work of figuring it out. I'm just hoping to avoid wasting a lot of time going down blind alleys.

Thanks in advance for any pointers you may have.

Bob

Scripting

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_Bob_Halpin_Author

Participating Frequently

NAV is an ERP application from Microsoft. (Think *huge* accounting system.)

In the development environment I can create variables of type 'Automation'.

The GUI then provides a list of the installed automation servers. In the list is 'Adobe InDesign CS3 Type Library'.

When that is chosen, the class list is populated and I choose 'Application'.

In the code, I use the 'create' command with that Automation variable to boot an instance of the application. This is the same as I would use for Excel - and it work's just fine with it.

But, when I try to boot InDesign I get the error:

Could not create an instance of the OLE control or Automation server identified by the GUID={666F676B-7790-4B6F-B691-EC43C6F94C18} 1.0:{296CAEB5-C99C-4B3E-9359-6E7D6EAE71FC}:'Adobe InDesign CS3 Type Library'.Application. Check that the OLE control or Automation server is correctly installed and registered.

Any ideas?

Thanks in advance.

Kasyan Servetsky

Legend

Hi Bob,

I think it’s possible to do with VB6. A couple of years ago I was experimenting with InDesign and Access. I could get data from InDesign — e.g. user name — and write it directly into a database. I don’t know what NAV is but it looks like a kind of database application.

Kasyan

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_Bob_Halpin_Author

Participating Frequently

Hi Olav.

I'm not sure how to answer that - but I'll try.

The dev environment in NAV gives me access to automation objects - if that's the right term. For example, I can boot an instance of Excel and manipulate it through it's "object" & method API which is, I guess, VB. I'm vague on the terms because I have done this for years on a Windows platform but in a non MS programming environment through open-source COM extensions to Tcl/Tk. Being 'off the grid' for so long, I just got used to getting things to work without much documentation or knowing the correct terms for this environment.

NAV seems to provide access to the full breadth of the MS automation/Com environment in a pretty seamless (but woefully undocumented) way. So, I'm fairly hopefull (and fearless) of taking this approach.

Also, it provides XML import & import functionality - which may be of benefit here. However, it is so tightly wrapped (and badly documented) that my hands are tied to an extent I'm really not comfortable with it.

Does any of this help?

Bob

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_Olav_Kvern_

Known Participant

Hi Bob,

I'll have to ask some questions to figure out the best approach. The first question is: does NAV support VBA/VBScript?

Thanks,

Ole