Month: November 2022

This post is part of the In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central (Administration), how do I… series and of the wider In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, how do I… series which I am posting as I familiarise myself with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central.

Having just finished posting a series on the New Functionality In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2022 Wave 2, I thought it might be useful to take a quick look at the rollout timeline for Dynamics BC.

There was a lot of changes in recent years to the Microsoft Dynamics GP rollout timeline in recent years, which I was working with until quite recently. I think the rollout timeline for Dynamics BC also went through some flux at the same time, but both have now settled down to a regular cadence.

There are two types of update for Dynamics BC; major and minor.

New capabilities roll out in “release waves” which consist of both major and minor updates. The series I just finished posting, was the announcement of the release wave from October to March and included both major and minor releases staged throughout that time period. While most of the new functionality comes in the major update, some will become at later times in minor updates and critical updates will be rolled out as soon as possible after they pass testing.

Major updates are released twice a year with availability typically in early April and early October; previews and sandboxes are usually available four to five weeks before this date so that you can do testing prior to rollout starting.

Continue reading “In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central (Administration), how do I… Understand the Update Rollout Timeline”

This post is part of the New Functionality In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2022 Wave 2 series in which I am taking a look at the new functionality introduced in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2022 Wave 2.

The first of the new functionality in the User Experience section is search in company data.

Office workers spend up to 20 percent of their working time searching for information. Finding specific information in a timely manner across different areas of a business management solution often requires tailored queries within different parts of it. Because the volume of data constantly increases, it becomes increasingly important to get relevant content fast.

Business Central now lets you search across all data that’s relevant for your role, and not just business transactions. The most relevant results show first, which saves valuable time and gives users the opportunity to focus on higher-value tasks.

Enabled for: users, automatically
General Availability: March 2023

You can start a search from your Role Center or by using the Ctrl+Alt+F shortcut key combination anywhere in Business Central.

Continue reading “New Functionality In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2022 Wave 2: Search in Company Data”

This post is part of the New Functionality In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2022 Wave 2 series in which I am taking a look at the new functionality introduced in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2022 Wave 2.

The fifth of the new functionality in the User Experience section is Modern Action Bar.

You can now use a promoted section of the action bar to help users learn the product. You can tailor it to fit the needs of your industry, company, or yourself. Add actions that you want to make available in an easily discoverable and consistent way across the product for new users to quickly learn the product, or tailor it to your business-specific needs for proficient users.

Enabled for: users, automatically
General Availability: October 2022

The action bar is updated with improvements for all existing customers as they are updated to 2022 release wave 2.

The action bar is better at keeping related actions together and avoiding the same action being available in multiple menus. This helps reduce clutter and confusion, especially for users new to Business Central.

Continue reading “New Functionality In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2022 Wave 2: Modern Action Bar”

This post is part of the New Functionality In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2022 Wave 2 series in which I am taking a look at the new functionality introduced in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2022 Wave 2.

The fourth of the new functionality in the User Experience section is legacy list views will be hidden.

The April 2019 release of Business Central introduced a new way to implement filtered list views that makes them available across form factors, and empowers business users to easily create, modify, hide, show, reorder, and remove views from the web client. Customers benefit from all of these capabilities when using views created using this newer model.

Enabled for: users, automatically
General Availability: October 2022

Legacy views are list views that were created by developers in previous versions of Business Central by placing them on the role center page. Business Central displays legacy views side by side with modern views directly on the list page, but these offer a degraded experience and fewer options compared to modern views.

Starting with 2023 release wave 2 (version 23.0), which is currently targeting Q3 of calendar year 2023, legacy views will no longer be supported and won’t be displayed on list pages.

You can already experience this change in 2022 release wave 2 (version 21.0) by enabling Legacy list views are hidden in the Feature Management page in Business Central.

This post is part of the New Functionality In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2022 Wave 2 series in which I am taking a look at the new functionality introduced in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2022 Wave 2.

The third of the new functionality in the User Experience section is switch companies across environments.

Business Central is ready to adapt to the needs of complex SMB organizations by organizing multiple companies across environments. While most employees are bound to a single company, some users need to view, edit, and compare data across companies. The 2022 release wave 2 makes it easier to get an overview of the companies and environments you have access to, and to rapidly switch contexts.

Enabled for: users, automatically
General Availability: October 2022

• Visual cues in the app bar help you to quickly understand which company and environment you’re currently working in, and include the company badge if one was specified for a company.
• Activate the company switcher pane from anywhere in Business Central, either from the app bar or using the Ctrl+O keyboard shortcut.
• Search for companies you have access to, grouped by environment, including production and sandbox environments within your organization.
• Switch company in the current browser tab or open the selected company in a new tab to multitask or compare data side by side.

The experience and capabilities may vary between Business Central online and on-premises.

Changes to the company badge

The company badge provides a colorful and compact visual indicator so that users can understand at a glance which context they are working in. To support the company switcher, administrators can now specify a badge to have a specific color and up to 6 characters—all from the Company Information page.

My opinion

Based on my experience I strongly disagree with the assertion that “…most employees are bound to a single company…”; in my experience users in multi-company organsiations will almost always be working in more than one company and regularly need to switch between them. Some of those multi-company clients with whom I work also have multiple environments as they may have an environment in the UK and another in Europe or the US, making this change look, on the surface at least, a very useful one. I’m keen to have a hands-on look at it and see how well it works in practice.

The screenshot of it certainly makes it seem a lot easier to switch between companies, even in the same environment.

This post is part of the New Functionality In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2022 Wave 2 series in which I am taking a look at the new functionality introduced in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2022 Wave 2.

The second of the new functionality in the User Experience section is experience updated UI elements.

BUSINESSVALUE.

Enabled for: users, automatically
General Availability: October 2022

The web client keeps up to date with Fluent UI design elements across the different application pages and system controls. In this release:

• Option fields and lookup fields are visually aligned when at rest.
• Bricks can now display a single verbose text field, extending the brick with up to three lines of text.
• Field and column tooltips updated.

This post is part of the New Functionality In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2022 Wave 2 series in which I am taking a look at the new functionality introduced in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2022 Wave 2.

The first of the new functionality in the User Experience section is auto-save as you work.

Since Business Central has no Save button, business users need full confidence that the data they enter or modify is saved automatically as they work. Similarly, developers need more accurate indication of data persistence when testing or debugging their code.

Enabled for: users, automatically
General Availability: October 2022

Business Central immediately saves changes to individual fields as soon as you tab away from the field or set focus to another element on the page, instead of only saving when the page is closed. Changes are saved to the database without any noticeable impact to performance.

Previously, this behavior was enabled exclusively for select UI experiences such as the Outlook add-in. Starting with 2022 release wave 2, this behavior applies to all Business Central clients including the desktop Web client, tablet client, phone client, Outlook add-in, Teams app, and embedding the client in any other applications.

The save indicator more accurately reflects the state of data on the page, even when working across multiple tabs or browser windows.

Administrators of Business Central on-premises can use the web server setting SaveValueToDatabasePromptly to turn off this capability (the setting is enabled by default).

This post is part of the New Functionality In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2022 Wave 2 series in which I am taking a look at the new functionality introduced in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2022 Wave 2.

The third of the new functionality in the Service and Platform section is compile against installed AppSource apps.

To increase stability of the environment operations, such as upgrade, copying, restore, lowering support impact both on partners and Microsoft, compilation should be done against the AppSource apps versions that are actually installed for the environment, not against the latest available version of those apps on AppSource.

Enabled for: users, automatically
General Availability: October 2022

Sometimes compilation on environment operations such as upgrade, copying a sandbox from production, or AppSource app install fails due to unexpected application incompatibility. The underlying cause for this has been that compilation has been done against the latest version of the AppSource app, even if the actual tenant or environment has a lower version installed. The end result would depend on the existence of breaking changes in these AppSource apps, and which versions are actually installed, but could lead to compilation failures.

To increase stability of the environment operation, and lowering support impact both on partners and Microsoft, compilation will now be done against the actually installed AppSource apps.

In the future, if the users experience issues with any environment operation, they can find the details of the failure in Business Central admin center, on the Environment Operations page.

This post is part of the New Functionality In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2022 Wave 2 series in which I am taking a look at the new functionality introduced in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2022 Wave 2.

The second of the new functionality in the Service and Platform section is use Power BI app on telemetry for insights into environments.

Tenant admins can get Power BI reports on telemetry with a one-click installation from Microsoft AppSource. These reports will give them insights into the performance, stability, and usage of Business Central.

Enabled for: users, automatically
General Availability: October 2022

To make it simple to analyze Business Central telemetry, we’ve developed a Power BI app available from Microsoft AppSource. The app is free and open source but requires a Power BI pro license.

The app consists of four reports:

• Usage
• Errors
• Performance
• Administration

Once installed and configured, different personas can analyze data to help drive decisions:

• The account manager can plan new activities with an existing customer.
• The product owner responsible for an extension/app can track which features in apps or per-tenant extensions are being used and how often.
• The project manager responsible for the implementation of a Business Central environment for customers can track progress on user acceptance testing (UAT) efforts and get smoother go-lives for customers.
• The support person performing triage, investigation, and mitigation of customer issues can diagnose errors and performance issues.

Get the app on AppSource here: Dynamics 365 Business Central Usage Analytics.