Preview environment for Dynamics 365 Business Central 2022 release wave 2 (BC21)

Public preview for Business central wave 2 (BC21) is available now

You can create preview version from SAAS version.

You will get more information about major updates from following

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/business-central/dev-itpro/administration/update-rollout-timeline

Stay tuned for more updates and lets start explore new features from new version.

Cheers…

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How to export data using TextBuilder in Business central.

Today we will see how we can data from business central table using new data type Text Builder.

To check how this data type work build small program as below which pick up data from customer table and export the data in text file.

pageextension 50101 CustomerMasterExtension extends "Customer List"
{
    actions
    {
        addlast(General)
        {
            action(DataExport)
            {
                Caption='Data Export to Text';
                ApplicationArea=All;
                PromotedCategory=Process;
                Promoted=true;
                Image=ExportDatabase;
                trigger OnAction()
                var
                CustomerMaster :Record Customer;
                Tempblob:Codeunit "Temp Blob";
                TextFileBuilder :TextBuilder;
                FileName:Text;
                InStreamData:InStream;
                OutStreamData:OutStream;
                begin 
                    FileName:='CustomerData.Txt';
                    TextFileBuilder.AppendLine('Customer No'+','+'Customer Name'+','+'Balance');
                    If CustomerMaster.FindSet() then repeat
                        CustomerMaster.SetAutoCalcFields(CustomerMaster.Balance);
                        TextFileBuilder.AppendLine(CustomerMaster."No."+','+CustomerMaster.Name+','+Format(CustomerMaster.Balance));
                    until CustomerMaster.Next()=0;
                    Tempblob.CreateOutStream(OutStreamData);
                    OutStreamData.WriteText(TextFileBuilder.ToText());
                    Tempblob.CreateInStream(InStreamData);
                    DownloadFromStream(InStreamData,'','','',FileName);
                end;
            }
        }
    }
}

If you look at the above code it is taking required data from customer table and export the data in text file as below.

To get more insight of data type have a look at MS documentation from below link

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/business-central/dev-itpro/developer/methods-auto/textbuilder/textbuilder-data-type

Hope this will help you.

Stay tuned for more.

How to change Customer Name on Open Sales Order in business central

With the release business central Wave 1 2022 lot of new features has been added to improve the user interaction with application.

This feature is small improvements in business central which allows to changes the name of customer on open sales document. This change of name will be applicable for that document only. This change of name is controlled by setup on sales & receivables setup.

Lets see how this setup works now on sales order

  1. If this setup is not enabled on Sales & Receivable setup .Try to change name on sales order and it shows following message

This message states that if you trying to change the customer name then master not found the record then asking whether like to create new record or if you existing customer with new name then select that customer.

2. If this setup is enabled in Sales & Receivables setup. Try to change name on sales order.

Now it allows to change the name on sales order

Hope this will help

Stay tune for more….

How to define multiple layouts for report in Business Central

With the release of business central V20 lot of new features are introduced and one of the features in you can define multiple layouts for reports while developing

In earlier days we are defining multiple layouts as below.

Now with the new release new rendering section is added while creating report in AL development

In the above rendering section we can define multiple layout as below

After compilations of report we can see the layout is created as below

Isn’t that cool features for layout

This features is available for Runtime 9.0

Hope this will help you..

Stay tuned for more.

Business Central Wave 1 2022 Released

With the new dawn of 1st April Microsoft released Business Central Wave 1 2022.

The product DVD will be downloaded from following URL

Business Central Wave 1 2022

Few features of Business Central you can visit this link

Business Central Wave 2 2022 Features

Stay tuned for more detail.

Preview Environment for Business Central 2022 Wave 1 (BC20)

So with new year major version of business central is about to release and in context of that Microsoft released preview version of business central 2022 Wave 1 (BC 20). This preview version only possible to create for Sandbox and non production environment.

How to get this preview environment to get the hands on the new release

On the cloud version of business central one can create Sandbox as below for preview version

This preview version available on docker also.

For Docket Artifacts user following PowerShell command.

Get-BcArtifactUrl -storageAccount BcPublicPreview -country <country> -type <type>

To understand more about the features of BC20 you can visit here

Stay tuned for more on this version

How to change primary key in Business Central Table

Recently one of my customer asked me to add few more fields on primary key and I was looking at the customer like he asked something which is daunting task to be done with business central as everybody aware of that we can not change the primary key fields when table is already having data as while deploying the app it throws an error as below

Even I tried using Force sync also but it is still failing to deploy the app as this is breaking change for the app.

Now question is how to do this and overcome from such situation as your customer is behind you to do that.

To make it work we need to use ObsoleteState and ObsoleteReason that means we need to make your table obsolete and create a new table with new primary key and change the references in all those object where the object is referred.

To make the table obsolete mention the property as below.

Obsolete property value

ValueDescription
NoNot obsolete. This is the normal/default setting.
PendingWill become obsolete in a future version.
RemovedHas been made obsolete.

After making above table obsolete created new table with the new primary key.

Next point is how to transfer data in the new table .

To transfer data from obsolete table to new table used Installed code unit . Additionally you can use temporary table to update data from old table to new table.

If you would like to learn more about ObsoleteState Property then visit here.

Hope this will help you.

Stay tuned for more updates.

What is planned for Business Central Wave 2 2022 release

As we are gearing up for new release of business central and already the buzz is started for new version . Here I will list few upcoming features which I am looking forward in new version.

In-Client Performance Profiler

Demo tool and demo data for manufacturing scenarios

Users can export report datasets to XML

Introduce copy link option in the Share menu

Guided tour that helps users find settings and personalization tools

Support for rich text in teaching tips and tours

New capabilities for financial reporting with account schedules

Use Excel to design layouts for reports

Permission set handling enhancements

For more details please visit on my twitter or here

Business Central and Fonts on Reports

Today morning there was issue raised by my consultant stating that text on business central reports showing weird characters as below.

Though these reports was working well on On-Premise but after uploading to cloud it started showing those weird characters.

After checking report layout found that using the same fonts which is available on cloud version of business central but it still fails.

Why ? What could be the reason.

After checking found that customer created data in local language and to display those we need to have font which support those characters to show and I change the font on report and it showed correctly. (Surprisingly the font I used to show report data it worked properly and show data correctly and even it is not listed in the standard list .I think it depends on your country also)

On your own container you have leverage to install the font by using PowerShell command.

But for cloud please choose font wisely so it will not break your app.

Please see link for Available fonts on business central.

Hope this will help you.

How to discover reports and administration in business central role explorer

With the release of Business Central Wave 2 2021 aka BCV19 lot of new features has been added to make life easier of developer and/or customers.

One of new feature added in business central V19 for role explorer where in one can explore all the reports and other screens.

There is new button added on Business Central V19 as below

Once you click on this button all the modules will be displayed irrespective of assign role center.

There are few more options once you click on Explore More roles where in you can filter for reports or administration pages.

With this new features you can find all the reports or administration pages at one place efficiently.

Hope this will help to find the reports.

Stay tuned for more.