Author: Ian Grieve

This post is part of the New Functionality In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2024 Wave 2 series in which I am taking a look at the new functionality introduced in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2024 Wave 2.

The 10th of the new functionality in the Development section is extend AL interfaces.

The support for extensible interfaces in programming languages offers significant business value by enabling creation of flexible and adaptable extensions that can evolve over time to meet changing business needs. They enable developers to add new functionalities without altering the core system, which can save time and resources while reducing the risk of introducing errors into the existing codebase. They are a key component in modern software engineering, providing the agility and flexibility needed to drive innovation and maintain a competitive edge in today’s fast-paced business environment.

Enabled for: Admins, makers, marketers, or analysts, automatically
Public Preview: Oct 2024
General Availability: Oct 2024

Feature Details

You can now extend one or more existing interfaces when you declare an interface. When implementing an interface that extends other interfaces, the implementor must also implement all methods from all extended interfaces.

The feature also works with the testing and casting operators is and as, which are also new additions to the AL language in this release.

The syntax is shown in example below. Here, TheImplementor can be used as both IFoo, IBar, and IFooBar.

This post is part of the New Functionality In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2024 Wave 2 series in which I am taking a look at the new functionality introduced in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2024 Wave 2.

The 9th of the new functionality in the Development section is type testing and casting operators for interfaces.

The contractual behavior of interfaces has been a limiting factor with regards to update and future extensibility. Adding casting will greatly increase the usefulness of interfaces in AL. In this version, Microsoft introduce support for type testing and casting interfaces in the AL language. Two new operators, ‘is’ and ‘as’, have been added to facilitate these operations. The ‘is’ keyword checks if an interface is of a specific type, which is useful for ensuring type safety within code. The ‘as’ keyword, on the other hand, attempts to cast an interface to another interface. These operators improve the extensibility and usefulness of interfaces in AL and align with the broader programming practice of ensuring that systems are built with future growth and adaptability in mind, allowing for seamless updates and maintenance.

Enabled for: Admins, makers, marketers, or analysts, automatically
Public Preview: Oct 2024
General Availability: Oct 2024

Feature Details

In this version, Microsoft introduce support for casting between AL interfaces. Given an interface A, you can cast it to the interface B if the underlying object (only codeunit for now) implements B. Two new operators, ‘is’ and ‘as’, are added to facilitate these operations.

The is operator

The is operator allows you to test whether an instance of an interface, or the content of a variant supports a specific interface. Here’s the syntax for using the is keyword:

You can also use the is operator with variants:

The as operator

The as operator is used for casting an instance of an interface to a specific interface. If the source interface doesn’t implement the target interface, it will throw an error at runtime. Here’s an example:

Similarly, the as keyword works with variants:

This post is part of the New Functionality In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2024 Wave 2 series in which I am taking a look at the new functionality introduced in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2024 Wave 2.

The 7th of the new functionality in the Development section is package resources in extensions and access from AL.

Often features require some data, for example to initialize and set up. Until now, it has only been possible to add such data and consume from AL through the use of labels or code. In this release, Microsoft are adding the ability to include resources in extensions and access these from AL.

Enabled for: Admins, makers, marketers, or analysts, automatically
Public Preview: Oct 2024
General Availability: Oct 2024

Feature Details

Developers will be able to package resources in extensions and access the content of these resources from within AL code. This can be used to ship data for setup and initialization features (for example, for RapidStart packages, demo data, templates, and more), thereby avoiding having to use labels or codeunits for this purpose.

This post is part of the New Functionality In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2024 Wave 2 series in which I am taking a look at the new functionality introduced in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2024 Wave 2.

The 6th of the new functionality in the Development section is use improved features for report documents.

Developers and power users can use more of the features that Word provides for document layouts. These improvements reduce time spent on designing layouts for documents and let more power users work with document layouts.

Enabled for: Users by admins, makers, or analysts
Public Preview: –
General Availability: Oct 2024

Feature Details

You use report documents in Business Central when you need to send a document such as a quote, order, or invoice to your customers or suppliers.

The following improvements are available for the Word layout feature:

• You can use sections in Word layouts even when you use the WordMergeDataItem property. This unlocks the ability to change layout properties, such as margins, orientation (portrait or landscape), or columns inside your Word layout. Also, you can use different watermarks for different parts of the layout. For more information, go to Using sections in a Word layout.
• From the Report Layouts page, you can download a Word layout template for a report. The layout template makes it easier to convert an RDL layout or a customer-supplied Word file into a Word layout for a report.
• A new Word add-in lets you control conditional visibility of text, tables, or table rows/columns.

This post is part of the New Functionality In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2024 Wave 2 series in which I am taking a look at the new functionality introduced in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2024 Wave 2.

The 5th of the new functionality in the Development section is restore extensions if publishing from Visual Studio Code fails.

If publishing an extension from within Visual Studio Code fails, the publishing process tries to restore any previously installed extensions, that were uninstalled and unpublished as part of the failed publishing. If a full restore fails, the developer is informed about which extensions could be restored and which ones failed, providing the developer with a better overview.

Enabled for: Admins, makers, marketers, or analysts, automatically
Public Preview: Oct 2024
General Availability: Oct 2024

Feature Details

When deploying an extension from Visual Studio Code, which is part of a graph of installed extensions on the target environment, first level dependent extensions are uninstalled and unpublished in order to be recompiled once the extension has been deployed. However, if the deployment from Visual Studio Code fails (for example, due to a compilation issue on the server), the server is left with an incomplete graph of installed extensions. This results in unnecessary manual work to redeploy the previously installed extensions in the correct order. With this release, Visual Studio Code now tries to restore the previous extension state, removing the need for manual work in most cases

This post is part of the New Functionality In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2024 Wave 2 series in which I am taking a look at the new functionality introduced in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2024 Wave 2.

The 4th of the new functionality in the Development section is use the ‘this’ keyword for codeunit self reference.

A new ‘this’ keyword is introduced as known from other languages. The keyword supports passing the current object as arguments to methods, which until now has only been possible with less optimal workarounds. In addition, the use of the this keyword improves readability for bigger methods where it can be difficult to see if a variable is global or local scope..

Enabled for: Admins, makers, marketers, or analysts, automatically
Public Preview: Oct 2024
General Availability: Oct 2024

Feature Details

Microsoft have added support for the this keyword for self-reference on all objects, as known from other programming languages.

The main benefits of using the this keyword are that it

• Allows codeunits to pass a reference to this (which is itself) as an argument to another method.
• Improves readability by signaling that a referenced symbol is a member on the object itself.

A new CodeCop rule AA0248 is added and enabled by default with severity ‘hidden’. ‘Hidden’ means that it shows up as three dots in the editor, but not as a diagnostics in the Problem view in Visual Studio Code, or in pipelines. There’s also a workspace-wide CodeFixer to update existing code to use the this keyword.

The System Application is converted to use this for referencing methods and globals in the same object.