Author: Ammolh Saallvi

I'm a Dynamics NAV/Navision developer and helps partners and end-users with their NAV implementations. I do everything from third-party management advisory, training to new NAV teams, project management, training, setup and development. Do you want to hire me to help getting your project a success? Then contact me via dropping one email from linkedin Expertise in end-to-end development of software products from requirement analysis to System Study, Documentation and Testing. Demonstrated abilities in analyzing information system needs, evaluating end-user requirements, custom designing solutions, troubleshooting for complex information systems management. Deft at carrying out risk analysis, impact analysis, project reviews and documentation. Strong Problem solving & Technical skills coupled with confident decision making for enabling effective solutions leading to high customer satisfaction as well as low operational costs. Certifications:- Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist -Dynamics Microsoft Sure Step Certified Professional Moderator at DUG Forum Specialties: • ERP Implementation • Client/Server Programming • Coding, Testing, troubleshooting and documentation. • Database Tuning and SQL • Database Performance • Debugging large programs • Project Management and Resource Management.

What’s New for Developers (2024 Wave 1)

As you all aware of that new version of business central 2024 Wave 1 is knocking the door but before that we already got new AL language extension with many changes. The points which I can feel most useful as below

Support for multiple extensions to same target and extensions and target in same app
- This means if you are working in one of the app and based on some requirement if you want add field in one of the base table then you can create table extension for that table in the same app. Personally, I still not figure it out how I can use it in my application. (Lets give a try).
Support ended for debugging Business Central server versions less than 20
- Once you install this new version of AL language then Business Central server versions released before the April 2022 release (version 20) cannot be debugged with AL extension package versions that are greater than or equal to version 13.
Tooltips on table fields
- Introduced the tooltip property on table fields, which like the caption will be applied on page controls that reference the table field. This includes a code action that helps with moving the tooltip from page controls to table fields or cleans them up from the page in case of duplicates.
- To get this property enabled please set runtime version as 13.0 in app.json

Note : If you already set tooltip property on table and then you try to move the page tooltip then you can see code actions is not available.

4. Placeholder text on Page Fields

Page fields can now leverage the InstructionalText and InstructionalTextML properties to define placeholders. These values will be showed when the field would otherwise be empty.

Using this new capability, you can provide example values to your users. This feature is currently supported only for text types like Text, BigText, Code, and Guid.

5. New “Create AL Project” button

This is replacement of AL:GO!

Keep exploring and stay in touch for more.

What is planned for Business Central Wave 1 2024 release

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

Copilot and AI innovation

One of the hot topics in market and lot of new features are revolved around this innovation such as

Introduce Power Automate Copilot integration with Business Central

Create sales lines easily with Copilot

Create product information faster with Copilot

Complete bank account reconciliation faster with Copilot

Map e-documents to purchase order lines with Copilot

Learn more about fields with Copilot

Development

This time less features planned for development side but are important

Debug the system application : This will help us to understand the code flow while debugging the application.

Remove friction when working with external app dependencies :- With this feature MS will make it possible to download the symbols from AppSource applications so we no need to depend on publisher of app.

User experiences

Use drag and drop to attach multiple files

Use actions to navigate and highlight or fix platform-generated errors

Share error details to get help from another user

There are more and more rich features planned for this release please keep an eye on

What’s new and planned for Dynamics 365 Business Central

Stay tuned for more….

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…

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

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

Value	Description
No	Not obsolete. This is the normal/default setting.
Pending	Will become obsolete in a future version.
Removed	Has 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