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 Governance and administration section is view app compatibility with future versions in admin center.

By reporting the compatibility between the base application and other apps installed on an environment in the admin center, administrators can better prepare for changes and avoid potential problems during upgrades.

Enabled for: Users, automatically
Public Preview: –
General Availability: Dec 2024

Feature Details

Environment updates might include changes to functionality that installed apps depend on, which, in turn, can break those apps. Until 2024 release wave 2, only notification recipients and registered Application Insights resources received messages about incompatibilities of installed apps with a future Business Central update.

To make it easier to plan for these changes ahead of time and avoid upgrade failures, you can now view app compatibility reports directly in the admin center. You’re prevented from scheduling an update to a version that installed apps are incompatible with.

My Opinion

This sounds like it will be useful to avoid nasty surprises at upgrade time by giving advance notification and allowing any issues to be managed.

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 3rd of the new functionality in the Governance and administration section is manage per-tenant extensions in admin center.

Having a unified user interface and API for managing per-tenant extensions (PTEs), alongside AppSource apps makes it easier and faster for administrators to deploy and maintain extensions across different environments and tenants.

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

Feature Details

In this release, Microsoft are introducing a new feature that lets Business Central administrators manage PTEs from the Business Central admin center and its API, similar to how AppSource apps can be managed today. This feature saves time and effort because admins can manage PTEs across different environments and tenants without having to go to the client of each environment.

My Opinion

I’m not directly involved in applying updates to Business Central, but this sounds like it could be a useful tool for those who are.

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 2nd of the new functionality in the Governance and administration section is migrate record links and notes with cloud migration tooling.

Business users often attach links and notes to records in Business Central to add context and extra information. For businesses transitioning from on-premises to cloud environments, this feature ensures that these links and notes on records are included in the cloud migration without the need for the external tooling. This feature saves valuable time and reduces the risks of error with manual data transfer.

Enabled for: Users, automatically
Public Preview: Sep 2024
General Availability: Oct 2024

Feature Details

Previously, the record links and notes were not automatically migrated to the online tenant as part of the cloud migration process. Instead, you had to use manual means to move the data. Now, the cloud migration setup and replication tooling will automatically migrate the links and notes on records for you with minimal work on your part.

My Opinion

More and more clients are making the decision to migrate, or upgrade from an on-premises deployment of Business Central, to the cloud SaaS version of Business Central. This enhancement should make the move to th cloud easier to do while preserving data in the system without needing external tools.

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 1st of the new functionality in the Governance and administration section is manage environment updates more flexibly.

With extended periods for major releases and optional minor updates, administrators have more flexibility to update environments in a way that suits their needs. Businesses have more time to prepare for updates and plan them for less busy periods.

Enabled for: Admins, makers, marketers, or analysts, automatically
Public Preview: Oct 2024
General Availability: Mar 2025

Feature Details

Previously, relatively rigid update policies were in place for major and minor updates. This release introduces the following changes for much more flexibility:

• Five month update periods for major updates: This change gives more time for thorough testing and preparation before implementing the update. Resellers can spread the workload of updating all customer environments over the entire calendar year to avoid peak periods for major updates. Developers have more time to ensure all apps are compatible with the update, and customers with specific testing and preparation requirements have more time to comply with those requirements.
• Optional minor updates: This change allows administrators to choose when and whether to implement minor updates based on their needs and schedule. The default behavior of environments receiving updates every month doesn’t change. Instead, a new environment-level setting makes it possible to opt-out of monthly minor updates.

As part of these changes, the grace period after the update period for the next major update shortened to one month. As before, the update will run and can’t be postponed to a later date during this grace period. The update will be forced by uninstalling incompatible extensions once the grace period ends.

My Opinion

This change sounds like a strong positive for VARs (Value Added Resellers) as it will allow client updates to be spread out more, allowing for more time for any development updates to be made and tested, and also allow the client to prepare for the upgrade as well, with any changes to process they want to test and prepare if they’re going to start using some of the new functionality.

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 11th of the new functionality in the Development section is extend and customize profiles from other extensions.

One of the current extensibility gaps is the lacking ability to extend profiles. This implies that partners have been forced to copy profiles defined in other extensions whenever they needed to do some changes for them. In this release, it’s now possible to define profile extension objects.

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

Feature Details

With this feature, you can now create profile extension objects in your AL code. They can be used to modify the target profile’s caption, role center, or even include/remove it from the role explorer. It’s also possible to add page customizations to a specified profile.

In addition to the language support, additional coverage in IntelliSense, AL Explorer, and analyzer rules have been added.

The following code example shows a profile extension:

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: