Category: Business Central (Nav/Navision)

When writing this post on warehouse receipts I came across an oddity when previewing the posting of the receipt.

If I created a warehouse receipt for an order, I can successfully preview the posting; if I created a new receipt for a second receipt and did a preview of the posting, the preview was successful. However, if I created one receipt with both orders, then I received the following error:

I was able to replicate this error with any warehouse receipt containing two or more receipts. I spent a while investigating before realising that the issue was only with the posting preview; if I actually tried to post the receipt then the posting was successful.

I discussed this with a couple of colleagues and we all agree that it is odd, but it appears to be a designed behaviour. The *** in quotes doesn’t show anywhere on the receipt, it just seems to be a set of characters which it uses as a placeholder and which causes the error.

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 fifteenth of the new functionality in the Development section is Track source and build metadata on extensions.

To help track extensions that are created as part of DevOps pipelines, Microsoft are introducing Source and Build properties in the app.json manifest of extensions. This allows easily finding the relevant source repo, commit ID, and build system used to create the extension.

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

Feature Details

The app.json manifest of extensions now contains two new properties, Source and Build. These can be used to track source location and the build context.

For source, the following are supported:

• repositoryUrl, which is the URL of the repository where the source code of the project can be found.
• commit, which is an ID of the source code for the current version of the project, that allows getting back to the commit that triggered building the extension.

For build, the following are supported:

• by, which is useful for tracking the build agent/system that orchestrated the build; for example, AL-Go for GitHub.
• url, which can be used for the URL to the build system invocation where the build can be found.

You can define these values directly in the app.json, but given the dynamic nature, the usual scenario would be to set these as part of build pipelines via command line parameters for the used alc.exe compiler executable. The values passed here will overwrite any values in the app.json source file.

If using BcContainerHelper, the functions Compile-AppInBcContainer and Compile-AppWithCompilerFolder now take parameters for "SourceRepositoryUrl", "SourceCommit", "BuildBy", and "BuildUrl". These are now being set if you use AL:Go for GitHub to build your extensions.

In this release none of these values are yet surfacing in the Extension Management page, in TAC, or via PowerShell commands like NAV-AppInfo. If you want to read the values, the option is currently to use the BcContainerHelper "Extract-AppFileToFolder", which will allow getting the app.json file with the settings.

Here’s an example of build and source metadata in app.json. This is normally set by the build process and not manually.

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 fourteenth of the new functionality in the Development section is Set the default folder location for new AL projects.

The AL Language extension for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central has a command to generate a new AL project. Since the start, the folder location for projects has been fixed to the users’ Documents folder in Windows. Based on asks, Microsoft are now adding the ability for partners to define a different default location for AL projects in the settings, making the project creation workflow easier.

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

Feature Details

There is now an al.algoSuggestedFolder setting for specifying the default folder location for new AL projects. This can be set per user or per workspace, offering some flexibility in the location for new projects.

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 thirteenth of the new functionality in the Development section is Get smarter method signature recommendations in IntelliSense.

One of the most common uses of IntelliSense when authoring code is getting parameter help on methods. IntelliSense is a great help, but not when showing options that don’t apply. Until now in AL, when there were multiple method overloads, the user would have to switch between them to get help matching the chosen overload. In this release, IntelliSense will be smarter and actually prioritize the first valid overload.

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

Feature Details

The AL Language extension will now reorder and prioritize relevant overloads when the developer starts typing a method invocation. If the typed expression corresponds to a valid overload, it will always be the first recommendation and the correct active parameter will be highlighted. The rest of the recommendations will be sorted in the order of relevance based on the provided parameters.

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 twelfth of the new functionality in the Development section is Get IntelliSense for adding variables in Visual Studio Code AL debugger console.

Usually when debugging code, the developer wants to see variable contents by adding it in the debug console window. To help raise discoverability and make it easier to add variables, the debugger console window now support IntelliSense.

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

Feature Details

The console supports IntelliSense for object types and members that can be evaluated in the context of the debugger: fields, locals, globals, and member symbols that are not methods on a data type.

Microsoft still don’t allow evaluations of methods in the console.

The debugger watch window is not supported for now, due to lack of integration points with Visual Studio Code.

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.

With a location enabled for requiring receive, we can now the receipt of goods to the warehouse.

There are two methods for using warehouse receipts:

1. Push, which is where a warehouse receipt is created for a single purchase (or other document bringing stock in, such as a sales return) order from the Create Whse. Receipt action on the Purchase Order card.
2. Pull, which is where a warehouse receipt is created from the Warehouse receipts page. This would typically be used when a shipment from a supplier has come in with goods from multiple orders.

In this post, I will be stepping through the second of the above methods, but you end up in the same window when you use the action mentioned in the first.

To create a warehouse receipt, search for Warehouse Receipts and click the New button.

Tab from the No. field and select the location for which goods are being received. Set the Posting Date and enter the Vendor Posting Number:

Continue reading “In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central (Inventory and Warehouse Management), how do I… Post Receipt From a Warehouse Receipt Document”

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 eleventh of the new functionality in the Development section is Choose between more sampling intervals for snapshot and in-client profiling.

Some releases ago Microsoft introduced a great new tool to investigate AL performance, namely profiling—either as the AL profiler for developers in a snapshot debug session from within Visual Studio Code, or as part of the in-client performance profiler accessible to customer admins and consultants as well as developers.

In the in-client performance profiler, and optionally in the AL profiler, sampling is used to determine at what intervals the system monitors what is running. At launch Microsoft supported 100ms sampling interval only. Based on feedback Microsoft are now allowing the user to choose between 50, 100 and 150ms. This allows for both finer and coarser granularity of insights, for example, to catch smaller operations and get more accurate durations, or to limit dates being captured and displayed to larger operations only.

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

Feature Details

With the launch.json snapshot configuration parameter profileSamplingInterval, AL developers can specify the interval at which the sampling will be collected. Current options are {50ms, 100ms, 150ms}. The default value is 100ms.

Continue reading “New Functionality In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2023 Wave 2: Choose Between More Sampling Intervals for Snapshot and In-client Profiling”

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 Development section is Set new output folder setting for storing app files at AL project build.

By default, when you build AL projects, the output app file is stored in the project folder. However, if you work on multiple apps that aren’t in the same workspace and depend on each other, outputting to a shared app folder can be a benefit.

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

Feature Details

In the “al.compilerOptions” settings, you can now use the “outFolder” property to specify which output folder to use when generating an app file as part of building an AL project.

This makes it easier to manage and reuse generated apps in a single location. The AL project in Visual Studio Code will still contain a node for the output file, but the file will then physically be stored outside of the project folder.

Here’s an example of saving built app files in “myappfolder” on the user’s C drive.

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 Development section is Hover over label variable to see text string value.

When label variables are used in AL code, only the label name is shown inline in the source code. To understand what the value of the label is, the developer has had to navigate to the label definition or use Peek Definition. In this release Microsoft add the ability to just hover over the label variable and instantly see the text string value in the tooltip inline, thereby avoiding switching context to see the value.

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

Feature Details

To easily see the text string value of a label variable, you can now just hover over the variable and the value will be shown in the tooltip. Thus you avoid too much content switching by navigating to the label definition or use Peek Definition (Alt+F12).

Here’s a small example: