Category: Business Central (Nav/Navision)

This post is part of the New Functionality In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2023 Wave 1 series in which I am taking a look at the new functionality introduced in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2023 Wave 1.

The sixth of the new functionality in the Productive with Microsoft 365 section is Performance – OData calls are now faster.

Most integrations to Business Central from external systems and services use the OData technology to read and write data. We’ve optimized this part of the Business Central server so that OData calls run faster and consume less resources. For customer integrations that use OData, this means better throughput (more calls per minute).

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

Feature Details

Most integrations to Business Central from external systems and services use the OData technology to read and write data.

In this release, we’ve optimized these parts of the OData layer on the Business Central server:

• It’s up to 40 percent faster to open an OData session and be ready to run logic.
• Opening an OData session no longer runs OnOpenCompany when accessing metadata. For customers with expensive AL logic that runs this trigger, this can greatly improve performance for OData calls.
• For web services on a Business Central online environment, we’ve optimized code in a name lookup service that will put performance on par with similar on-premises hardware setups.

This post is part of the New Functionality In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2023 Wave 1 series in which I am taking a look at the new functionality introduced in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2023 Wave 1.

The fifth of the new functionality in the Productive with Microsoft 365 section is New telemetry events and data.

Telemetry events on incoming and outgoing calls to web services, long-running AL methods, and error dialogs have been enhanced to make it even easier to troubleshoot performance and stability issues.

Enabled for: Users, automatically
Public Preview: Apr 2023
General Availability: Apr 2023

Feature Details

The following events have been improved in telemetry:

• Incoming web service calls (eventId RT0008) now include the time spent waiting in the throttling queue on the Business Central server. This allows you to track whether web services performance issues are due to throttling/queueing on the Business Central server.
• Incoming web service calls (eventId RT0008) now include the error message for OData/API calls when a failure occurs. This allows you to better troubleshoot web services issues.
• Outgoing web service calls (eventId RT0019) now include clientType and AL stack trace. This allows you to find places in your code where outgoing web service calls block the UI.
• Long-running AL methods (eventId RT0018) now include details about SQL statements on the Business Central database. This allows you to better understand the performance of your AL code.
• Error dialogs (eventId RT0018) now include the English error text instead of the localized version. This allows you to monitor error messages no matter which language the user has chosen in their client.

The following events are new in telemetry:

• Metadata permission set changes due to extensions installed/updated (eventId to be determined). This allows you to monitor permission changes, and also if they are introduced by an extension.
• File blocked from upload due to possible malware (eventId to be determined). This allows you to monitor potential security issues from user.
• Changes made in Feature Management. This allows you to track configuration changes done by the administrator.

Learn more about Business Central telemetry at Monitoring and Analyzing Telemetry.

This post is part of the New Functionality In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2023 Wave 1 series in which I am taking a look at the new functionality introduced in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2023 Wave 1.

The fourth of the new functionality in the Productive with Microsoft 365 section is Business Central server runs on .NET 6.

The Business Central server now runs on Microsoft .NET 6. This improves performance and resource consumption on all AL code execution.

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

Feature Details

Microsofthave moved the Business Central server to run on .NET 6 instead of .NET Framework 4.8.

Performance measurements suggest an improvement of 30 percent when executing AL code.

For on-premises installations, any existing .NET add-ins will need to be converted to .NET Standard before the Business Central environment can be upgraded to this release.

For more information, go to Migrating from .NET Framework to .NET Standard.

In the Microsoft base and system applications, all .NET add-ins have been converted to .NET Standard, except in the localized versions for the Netherlands and Mexico. In these versions, we encountered uses of .NET Framework where no .NET Standard options were available. The .NET add-ins in these two cases are hosted as Azure Functions. If you need to do the same for your on-premises solutions, refer to our source code to find out how it’s done.

This post is part of the New Functionality In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2023 Wave 1 series in which I am taking a look at the new functionality introduced in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2023 Wave 1.

The third of the new functionality in the Productive with Microsoft 365 section is Allow application and tenant databases to differ in collation.

On-premises customers can use many different collations for their environment, driven by different requirements for country or different ordering/strings operations. In a multitenant setup, until now it wouldn’t be possible to cohost tenant databases with different collations served by the same Business Central server (NST). With this release, you can easily cohost these databases on the same setup, and therefore administer such multitenant/multilanguage setups more efficiently.

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

Feature Details

The collation of a database controls the ordering and equality operations of strings. In earlier versions of Business Central, a multitenant installation required the application database and the tenant databases to have the same database collation. In this release, the Business Central server (the NST) will work even though the application and tenant databases use a different database collation.

This post is part of the New Functionality In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2023 Wave 1 series in which I am taking a look at the new functionality introduced in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2023 Wave 1.

The first of the new functionality in the Reporting and data analysis section is Analyze, group, and pivot data on list pages using multiple tabs.

End users and data analysts can analyze data from list pages directly in the client without the need to open the page in Excel or run a report.

The ability to analyze data directly in list pages raises the bar for what you can do without having to switch applications, while still allowing customers and partners to do more in report objects, Excel, Power BI, or other data analysis applications.

Enabled for: Users by admins, makers, or analysts
Public Preview: Apr 2023
General Availability: TBC

Feature Details

Analysis mode is a new way of interacting with data on list pages. Instead of running reports using different options and filters, you can simply add multiple tabs that represent different tasks or views on the data. Examples could be "My customers," "Follow-up items," "Recently added vendors," "Sales statistics," or any other view you want.

When you’re ready to analyze data on a list page (where you might have filtered data using a view or filter pane), simply switch to analysis mode:

Continue reading “New Functionality In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2023 Wave 1: Analyze, Group, and Pivot Data on List Pages Using Multiple Tabs”

This post is part of the New Functionality In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2023 Wave 1 series in which I am taking a look at the new functionality introduced in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2023 Wave 1.

The sixth of the new functionality in the Governance and administration section is Manage user permissions using security groups.

As businesses grow and change, managing permissions can become increasingly complex. Security groups can simplify the process by allowing administrators to group users by department, job function, or other criteria, and assign permissions to the group as a whole. Using security groups to manage permissions can save time and reduce the risk of human error. Security groups allow for easier management of access control, ensuring that users only have access to the resources they need. This can also streamline the process of onboarding new employees or contractors, as they can be quickly added to the appropriate security groups.

Enabled for: Users, automatically
Public Preview: Mar 2023
General Availability: Apr 2023

Feature Details

You can now use Azure Active Directory security groups to manage the permissions users have to access various parts of Business Central.

A prerequisite for using security groups in Business Central is that you must create Azure Active Directory security groups and add members to them either in the Microsoft 365 admin center or in the Azure Active Directory portal.

Continue reading “New Functionality In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2023 Wave 1: Manage User Permissions Using Security Groups”

This post is part of the New Functionality In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2023 Wave 1 series in which I am taking a look at the new functionality introduced in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2023 Wave 1.

The fifth of the new functionality in the Governance and administration section is Delegated admin’s job queue entries are run by user.

Microsoft partners use the delegated admin role to set up and manage certain aspects of Business Central on behalf of their customers. However, the role is restricted in some ways. In earlier release waves, one of these restrictions was the ability to create job queue entries and set them as ready to run for customers. The job queue is an important tool for setting up and configuring companies in Business Central. With this update, delegated admins can create job queue entries and request approval from a licensed user to run them.

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

Feature Details

For Business Central online, people who are not employed by the customer, typically Microsoft partners, can use the delegated admin role to set up and configure business processes for the customers. However, the delegated admin role is not a licensed user in Business Central, and often is only assigned temporarily, so there are some limitations to what they can do. For example, delegated admins cannot set up tasks that might be run after the delegated admin relationship has been revoked, such as job queue entries.

Job queue entries are a useful tool for running setup and configuration processes in Business Central, and delegated admins must be able to create and run them in their customer’s tenant. This release wave adds support for the delegated admin to create job queue entries and set them as ready to run. Then, a licensed user from the customer can start the job queue entry to complete the process that the delegated admin created.

You can now use the Job Queue Entry Approval Workflow template to create a workflow that a delegated admin can use to ask for approval to run job queue entries through the credentials of a licensed user.

Continue reading “New Functionality In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2023 Wave 1: Delegated Admin’s Job Queue Entries Are Run by User”

This post is part of the New Functionality In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2023 Wave 1 series in which I am taking a look at the new functionality introduced in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2023 Wave 1.

The tenth of the new functionality in the Development section is Extensions that fail pre-upgrade validation get more detailed error insights.

When Business Central prepares a tenant upgrade, all extension versions that will be installed as part of the upgrade go through a prevalidation. To ensure a better understanding of failures as part of the prevalidation process, errors messages will contain more information about incompatible extensions.

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

Feature Details

Error messages from application validation ahead of upgrade will list all incompatible extension IDs, names, and publishers, which ensures a better understanding of any extensions that aren’t compatible with the new version.

This post is part of the New Functionality In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2023 Wave 1 series in which I am taking a look at the new functionality introduced in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2023 Wave 1.

The ninth of the new functionality in the Development section is Define regional settings per report using a region property.

Until this release, report formats for date and numerical types depended on client settings for region and couldn’t be configured on the report level. This was confusing because sometimes dates and numbers were formatted incorrectly.

Microsoft have now added the ability for the tenant admin to set formatting of date and numerical types of a report object on the tenant, and also added the ability for users to override the setting when running a report.

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

Feature Details

In this release, Microsoft have added the ability for developers and tenant administrators to set formats for dates and numerical types on report objects on the tenant. If needed, users can change the format when they run a report.

• They’ve added a new compiler property to give AL access to the property and set a metadata default value in the object. This allows the report developer to define region settings.
• They’ve added a new per-tenant configuration using a new region field on the Report Settings table. This can override the setting from AL report metadata.
• They’ve enhanced the Advanced FastTab on the report request page to allow end users to override region setting at report runtime.

My Opinion

More flexibility on reporting dates seems like a good idea, especially with Microsoft’s penchant for US date format being used in non-US locales.

This post is part of the New Functionality In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2023 Wave 1 series in which I am taking a look at the new functionality introduced in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2023 Wave 1.

The third of the new functionality in the Country and regional section is Country/regional expansion – Andorra.

Expanding Business Central to new markets across the globe.

Enabled for: Users, automatically
Public Preview: May 2023
General Availability: Jun 2023

Feature Details

Expanding Business Central to a number of additional countries is achieved through partner-led localization. The Microsoft partners create the relevant localization apps that are then published to AppSource. In combination with the built-in language offerings, Business Central is then available to serve customers in the following countries:

• Andorra
• Armenia
• Azerbaijan
• Bahamas
• Bermuda
• Bolivia
• British Virgin Islands
• Cambodia
• Cameroon
• Cayman Islands
• Ethiopia
• Fiji
• Ghana
• Guernsey
• Isle of Man
• Jersey
• Kazakhstan
• Kosovo
• Liechtenstein
• Macau (SAR China)
• Madagascar
• Malawi
• Mozambique
• Namibia
• Nepal
• San Marino
• Sao Tome & Principe
• Senegal
• Tanzania
• Uganda
• Zambia