Day: November 24, 2023

This post is part of the New Functionality In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2023 Wave 2 series in which I am taking a look at the new functionality introduced in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2023 Wave 2.

The tenth of the new functionality in the User experiences section is Scan barcodes with Business Central mobile app for iOS and Android.

The barcode scanner control increases warehouse users’ productivity as they can scan barcodes using the device camera or even the dedicated barcode scanner. This feature also opens scenarios for partners to create more advanced experiences using a barcode scanner.

Enabled for: Admins, makers, marketers, or analysts, automatically
Public Preview: Sep 2023
General Availability: Oct 2023

Feature Details

The new barcode scanning feature supports three different scenarios, each with varying levels of complexity. The scenarios range from simple user interface (UI) features to more advanced approaches that cater to ISVs.

• Scenario 1: UI button
  The mobile client renders a user-friendly control on page fields for starting the barcode scanner. To enable the barcode scanning action on a field, the ExtendedDatatype property in AL code must be set to Barcode. Pages with such fields, which are only supported for text and code data types, will automatically display a barcode scanning button in the UI, enabling scanning via the device camera. This scanning is highly efficient and responsive, featuring mobile OS level processing and supporting the most well-known 1D and 2D barcode formats. Once a barcode is scanned, its value is entered in the field on the page, and the focus moves to the next quick-entry field on the page. This feature is supported on both iOS and Android platforms.
• Scenario 2: AL action
  AL developers are also able to trigger the barcode scanning UI via an AL-based action, so the barcode scanning can be started via a button, link, or some other semiautomated logic (for instance, when a page is opened). Also supported on iOS and Android platforms, this scenario uses the same camera-based scanning technology as scenario 1 and returns the scanned barcode value to AL code for further processing.
• Scenario 3: Barcode event
  This scenario targets professional hardware devices, typically with laser-based barcode scanners, offering greater flexibility to developers. It is only supported by hardware barcode scanners, such as Zebra or Datalogic, running Android 11 and above (there’s no support for iOS). With this scenario, developers register a barcode subscriber that listens for subsequent barcode events on the AL side. When the hardware scans a barcode, its value is sent to the Business Central mobile app and then to AL code. In other words, AL code can intercept an event from an Android device and process the decoded barcode further. Additionally, this scenario supports scanning barcodes and building up a document without interacting with any UI.

My Opinion

As I said in the article on the Print and Scan Barcodes new feature, adding barcode scanning in by default into Business Central is a very good thing; it’s nice to see these apps for Android and iOS to complement the support for scanning itself.

This post is part of the New Functionality In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2023 Wave 2 series in which I am taking a look at the new functionality introduced in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2023 Wave 2.

The ninth of the new functionality in the User experiences section is Mark fields as read-only when customizing UI.

Business Central offers a powerful suite of user interface (UI) customization tools that empowers customers to quickly optimize the experience for individual users, for each role, or for the entire organization. Customers often ask their supporting partner to simplify how data is presented on a page, to improve readability and optimize data entry. Now, customers can self-serve by making fields non-editable directly in the UI, adding to the existing UI simplification capabilities such as hiding or moving fields on the page.

Enabled for: Users, automatically
Public Preview: Sep 2023
General Availability: Oct 2023

Feature Details

Business Central now includes the following:

• Make fields non-editable: When customizing the UI, use the context menu to specify that a field should be read-only. You can always undo your customization later. Setting the editable state of a field is not a security feature and should only be used to optimize pages for readability and efficient data entry. This enhancement does not allow making fields editable if the application developer has specified that a field should be read-only.
• Choose the scope of your change: Personalize your own workspace or roll out the change safely for one or more roles (profiles) starting with a sandbox or directly in production.

Try it out

To experience making fields read-only, sign in to Business Central and follow this example (or similar):

1. Navigate to the Profiles (Roles) list and choose Customize Pages for your current profile.
2. When the new tab loads, navigate to the Item card or another page of your choice.
3. For any editable field, bring up the field customization menu and choose Lock editing.

My Opinion

This is a very welcome enhancement which, due to its simplicity, I am surprised wasn’t already in Business Central. It’s been quite a common request from clients when showing them how to personalise pages by adding, moving or removing fields, to also set them to disabled. Unfortunately, so far we’ve had to say it can’t be done; fortunately, with this enhancement we can now show them how to make fields read-only.

The Supported Upgrade Paths to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central Releases document from Microsoft was updated with a note in late October to reflect a change to the upgrade path for Business Central 2019 (v14), starting from 2025 release Wave 1 (v26).

This change will affect the upgrade to Business Central 2025 Release Wave 1 (v26) which will now require you to upgrade from Business Central 2019 (v14) to Business Central 2024 Release Wave 2 (v25), before doing a second upgrade to 2025 Release Wave 1 (v26).

There is also a note that upgrading from minor updates between the release updates might not always be supported; you need to check the Dynamics 365 Business Central Upgrade Compatibility Matrix to check if the version you’re on is compatible and upgrade first to a supported release before continuing the upgrade to a later release.

As time goes by, I expect that the upgrade path for older versions continues to become longer with more versions needing to upgrade to an intermediate version before upgrading to the most recent release.

This is probably more the case with versions of Microsoft Dynamics NAV, of which all are no longer supported, but will impact earlier versions of Business Central.