How do we upgrade Document Creator when upgrading to a newer BC version? (On-Premise)

For more information on on-premise data upgrades, please see the Data Upgrades during BC Upgrades section in our online Installation & User Manual.

BC20: Custom Report Layouts to (Tenant) Report Layouts

Starting from BC 20.0 and up, Microsoft has refactored the report rendering implementation in Business Central, obsoleting the Custom Report Layouts table for layouts. This refactoring has been applied as a breaking change, making it that custom report layouts can no longer be used for Document Creator layouts.

After upgrading from a previous Business Central version, Document Creator will show notifications on the role center and (Custom) Report Layouts page that informs you that will need to run the data upgrade to convert the custom report layouts to new (tenant/user-defined) report layouts. The first time you run a report with a custom report layout, you will be prompted for this conversion as well, with a question that reads:

"The Custom Report Layouts page cannot be used for "Document Creator" layouts since April 1st, 2022. The custom report layouts can be converted to tenant report layouts that are visible in the "Report Layouts" page. Would you like to run the conversion of the existing (<number of custom report layouts>) Document Creator custom report layouts and their corresponding report layout selections right now?"

If you choose Yes the custom report layouts will be converted automatically for you. Note that if you have errors in your Custom Report Layouts (e.g., a custom report layout with a missing target report object or a processing-only report object), then you should resolve these errors first, and then run the conversion again.

From BC15 and up to the latest BC version

When upgrading to a new major or minor update of Business Central, make sure to publish the latest available runtime package for your platform. Also, make sure to sync the extension (Sync-NAVApp), and run a data-upgrade (Start-NAVAppDataUpgrade) if necessary (i.e., in case you install a newer version of Document Creator than the version that was installed in your current environment). For more information, please consult the Publishing, Upgrading, and Installing Extensions During Upgrade page.

From BC14 to BC15 and up

To migrate Document Creator table data during an upgrade from Business Central 14.x to newer Business Central versions (15.x and up), please follow these steps:

In the Current Environment (Before the BC Upgrade)

1. Have the latest version of the "Document Creator" (and "Document Creator Utilities") app installed.
2. Publish, sync and install the "Document Creator Upgrade Data" app.
3. Publish, sync and install the "Document Creator Source Data Migration" app. Code for migrating data will be run automatically.
4. Uninstall the "Document Creator Source Data Migration" and "Document Creator" (and "Document Creator Utilities") app.
5. Finally, upgrade the environment to the new Business Central release.

In the Upgraded Environment (After the BC Upgrade)

1. Publish, sync and install the "Document Creator" and "Document Creator On-Premise" app.
2. Publish, sync and install the "Document Creator Target Data Migration" app. Code for migrating data will be run automatically.
3. Uninstall the "Document Creator Target Data Migration" and "Document Creator Upgrade Data" app. You can run a Sync-NavApp with -Mode Clean to purge all upgrade extension data from the database.
4. Follow the further installation instructions from the Dynamics 365 Business Central 2019 release Wave 2 and up (BC15+) section.

You can download the (source code of the) Data Upgrade Extensions from the Apportunix Downloads Drive.

To newer Dynamics NAV versions (NAV2015, NAV2016, NAV2017, NAV2018, BC13, BC14)

The table schemas of Document Creator for Dynamics NAV are upwards compatible, meaning that if you want to upgrade to a newer NAV version (including BC 13.x and BC 14.x) you can simply use the existing table definitions in the upgrade process. Please make sure that you install the latest version of Document Creator for the applicable target version as described in the Dynamics NAV 2015 – 2018 and Dynamics 365 Business Central Fall '18 Release (BC13) installation instructions.