The MorphX Development Environment and Tools

The property sheet

Properties are an important part of the metadata system. Each property is a key and value pair. You can use the property sheet to inspect and modify properties of elements.

When the Development Workspace opens, the property sheet is visible by default. If you close it, you can open it again anytime by pressing Alt+Enter or by clicking the Properties button on the toolbar of the Development Workspace. The property sheet automatically updates itself to show properties for any element selected in the AOT. You don’t have to open the property sheet manually for each element; you can leave it open and browse the elements. Figure 2-9 shows the property sheet for the TaxSpec class. The two columns are the key and value pairs for each property.

FIGURE 2-9 Property sheet for an element in the AOT.

TIP

Pressing Esc in the property sheet sets the focus back to your origin.

Figure 2-10 shows the Categories tab for the class shown in Figure 2-9. On this tab, related properties are categorized. For elements with many properties, this view can make it easier to find the right property.

FIGURE 2-10 The Categories tab on the property sheet for an element in the AOT.

Read-only properties appear in gray. Just like files in the file system, elements contain information about who created them and when they were modified. Elements that come from Microsoft all have the same time and user stamps.

The default sort order places related properties near each other. Categories were introduced in an earlier version of Microsoft Dynamics AX to make finding properties easier, but you can also sort properties alphabetically by setting a parameter in the Options form.

You can dock the property sheet on either side of the screen by right-clicking the title bar. Docking ensures that the property sheet is never hidden behind another tool.