Month: November 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 twenty-second of the new functionality in the Development section is Add a new FieldGroup to an existing table.

One of the highest-voted extensibility gaps in AL is the ability to add field groups to tables through table extensions, when the table doesn’t have one. Apart from a functional gap, this also impacts moving existing on-premise customizations to extensions, be it on-premises still or to cloud.

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

Feature Details

While it’s currently possible to add a FieldGroup (a dropdown list, for example) in an extension in a new table or to add fields to an existing FieldGroup for a core table, it isn’t possible to add a FieldGroup to a core table that doesn’t have one already defined. With this new feature, table extensions will be able to add a FieldGroup to existing tables.

The way this works is that a table extension can add fields by using the “addlast” keyword in the Dropdown or Brick field groups, just as today. However, if the field group doesn’t exist on the table, which is being extended, it will be created. If multiple table extensions each add fields, the field group will contain the merged result, in the order that the extensions are loaded (first AppSource apps, then PTEs).

This post is part of the In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central (Inventory and Warehouse Management), 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.

The first level of the advanced warehousing functionality, is to require both a warehouse receipt and a warehouse put-away. There are two toggles on the location card which need to be enabled. When you create a location, on the Warehouse fasttab, you need to toggle the Require Receive and Require Put-away options to the on position:

Receiving goods in this way, allows you to receive and put-away multiple orders at the same time, instead of one-by-one. In the next article of this series, I’ll step through the process of receiving items into the new GREEN location, shown above, using a receipt and a put-away.

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 twenty-first of the new functionality in the Development section is Provide queries for users to do ad hoc data analysis across tables.

Developers can now provide queries that end users and data analysts can use to analyze data directly in the client without the need to open the page in Excel or run a report.

Enabled for: Users by admins, makers, or analysts
Public Preview: Sep 2023
General Availability: Oct 2023

Feature Details

Analysis mode was introduced as a public preview feature in 2023 release wave 1 as a new way of interacting with data on list pages. Instead of running reports using different options and filters, users can simply add multiple tabs that represent different tasks or views on the data. For more information about the analysis mode on list pages, visit Analyze list data using data analysis mode.

In this release, Microsoft take this concept even further and make it possible to also analyze data from any query, the same way as you can on a list page. (Learn more at Analyze, group, and pivot data on queries using multiple tabs.)

Continue reading “New Functionality In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2023 Wave 2: Provide Queries for Users to do Ad Hoc Data Analysis Across Tables”

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 twentieth of the new functionality in the Development section is Use the AL Language extension for Linux in preview.

To allow developers to choose the environment that fits their needs as a platform for developing amazing Business Center extensions, Microsoft are releasing a preview of the AL Language extension for Linux with the Business Central 2023 release wave 2

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

Feature Details

The AL Language extension for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central now includes a Linux variant.

Just install the extension from https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=ms-dynamics-smb.al in your Visual Studio Code installation on Linux.

Since this is a preview, feedback is particularly welcome, as usual on https://github.com/microsoft/al/issues.

This post is part of the In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central (Inventory and Warehouse Management), 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.

We’ve so far taken a look at inventory put-aways and required receipts being processed separately. The next level of warehousing moves out of the basic warehousing which we’ve seen so far, into advanced warehousing by combining receipts with put-aways.

The receipts are the same, but the put-aways are warehousing put-aways rather than the inventory ones we looked at in the earlier article.

This configuration of requiring receipts and put-aways is generally used by larger businesses who require more controls in the warehouse. While in the coming articles, I will just be showing the process using a location, it is commonly used in combination with the use of bins. The only difference between using bins and not, is that in the receipt and put-away process, bins will (generally based on setup) default and be changed if necessary.

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 nineteenth of the new functionality in the Development section is Show list of keys while working on AL code.

IntelliSense offers great productivity features. On request, Microsoft have now added support for suggesting available keys when calling methods accepting key parameter. This improves speed and accuracy of coding and thus productivity.

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

Feature Details

AL methods accepting keys, such as SetCurrentKey(), now have IntelliSense listing key parameters that are available. Until now it has only shown the list of fields.

Note that IntelliSense still suggests table fields, in case the developer wants to just perform sorting on specific fields. Keys are only suggested for the first parameter; subsequent parameters just suggest fields.

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 eighteenth of the new functionality in the Development section is Segment AL code and reduce naming conflicts with namespaces.

AL for Business Central will now support namespaces, similar to other code languages. Namespaces provide a way of organizing objects and code in a logical and hierarchical manner. They can be used to help avoid naming conflicts between different extensions, making it easier to maintain and understand extensions, including the relationship between different objects.

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

Feature Details

An AL file can now define a namespace at the top, which will apply to all objects in the code file. A given object can only belong to one namespace, but the same namespace can be used for multiple AL files and objects.

When objects are resolved, the closest scope is used first. Therefore, to resolve to a similarly named object in a dependent extension, the reference must use a fully qualified name. Alternatively, it’s possible to define using directives to include external namespaces and thereby omit fully qualifying names.

Because namespaces are useful for logical segmentation of extensions, the AL Explorer also shows namespaces for objects and allows grouping objects by namespace, making it easier to discover related objects, focus on app subareas, and identify inconsistencies when adding new objects.

Continue reading “New Functionality In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2023 Wave 2: Segment AL Code and Reduce Naming Conflicts with Namespaces”

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 seventeenth of the new functionality in the Development section is Document your extensions with the ALDoc tool for partners.

Business Central has a large and continuously growing number of ISV apps on AppSource, some of which are being built upon, both by apps from the same publisher, other publishers and resellers (in the form of per-tenant extensions). To aid consuming apps downstream, documentation is a major benefit, but until now it has been a large manual process to create and keep that in sync with app changes, unless the publisher has invested in automation themselves.

Based on the recent investments for generated documentation for the Business Central base, system, and other first-party applications, Microsoft are giving publishers a new ALDoc tool. This allows generating documentation from symbolic and syntactical information, code comments, and overall application structure based on input .app files. Publishers can host the resulting documentation either internally—for example, for R&D usage—or externally for downstream partners.

Generating content based on source code has many advantages such as accuracy, 100 percent reflection of the current codebase, less error-prone documentation, and time savings.

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

Feature Details

It’s Microsoft’s pleasure to announce that with the latest prerelease update of the AL Language extension for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, Microsoft have included a preview of the ALDoc tool for partners.

The ALDoc tool generates documentation from symbolic and syntactical information, code comments, and overall application structure based on input .app files. You can use it to generate internally or externally facing reference documentation for your solution.

The tool also generates a help site with the reference articles, sorted by the application structure, based on the provided custom template.

Read more about the tool in their docs Generating help with the ALDoc tool.

Also, as usual, Microsoft want to hear what you think. Use AL issues for tool feedback.

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 sixteenth of the new functionality in the Development section is Use SecretText type to protect credentials and sensitive textual values from being revealed.

With an increasing amount of integrations to external systems, it’s not uncommon in AL code to work with secrets such as credentials and other sensitive textual values. Given the need to protect these from being revealed through debugging, the latter has often been blocked through resource exposure policies, at the cost of easy troubleshooting. To support enabling debugging, while protecting credentials and other sensitive textual values from being revealed, Microsoft are introducing a new SecretText type for variables. In addition, some of the common scenarios in the system app will get support for passing in SecretText parameters for credentials—for example, the HttpClient and Isolated Storage types.

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

Feature Details

A new type, SecretText, has been added to protect credentials and other sensitive textual values from being revealed through debugging. The declaration syntax will be similar to the Text data type, with the sole difference that it won’t support constraints on the length.

SecretText will be usable as a:

• Variable value
• Return value
• Parameter value

Its use will be limited to carrying, for example, credentials from the point of creation to the destination method. The destination method must accept a SecretText value.

Continue reading “New Functionality In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2023 Wave 2: Use SecretText Type to Protect Credentials and Sensitive Textual Values From Being Revealed”