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Code fails, the publishing process tries to restore any previously installed extensions, that were uninstalled and unpublished as part of the failed publishing.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.

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 Development section is pull extension source from GitHub when opening Visual Studio Code from the web client.

A year ago, you got the power to open a Visual Studio Code project from within the web client. This removed all the hassle of creating projects so you could launch configurations and download symbols yourself. This is a great tool for exploring functionality and troubleshooting, whether it’s in sandboxes or production, and it empowers support, consultants, and developers. However, what if access to extension code is blocked by IP resource exposure protection, but the source is in your GitHub repo? Or maybe you want to proceed with authoring your own code, such as hotfixing one of your apps or pulling the latest source version for changes or development? In 2024 release wave 2, this feature will make that possible.

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

Feature Details

In this release, Microsoft are building on the recent “Explore in Visual Studio Code” feature by using the source and build metadata in the manifest of an extension to offer pulling source from the related GitHub repository and from a specific build. This allows navigating code for the extensions that you have source access to and allows you to hotfix a given build or sync to get the latest changes for investigation or development.

From the Extension Management list page, you now have a new Open Source in VS Code option in the context menu for an extension.

If you invoke that, Visual Studio Code will open and ask you whether to clone or open the GitHub repo for the extension. It will use the repo metadata that was included in the extension when it was built.

You can read more about the source and build metadata in the app.json file here:

• Track source and build metadata on extensions
• JSON files

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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 Development section is use the ternary operator when coding in the AL language.

The ternary operator ? : known from other programming languages streamlines conditional operations in code, enhances readability and reduces verbosity. It’s particularly useful for simple conditions, promoting code clarity and intent-focused programming. By allowing variable initialization within the same line, it ensures proper assignment and minimizes code length. With this release, AL now also supports the ternary operator.

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

Feature Details

The ternary operator ? : can now be used to assign one of two values to a variable, depending on the condition of an expression.

Here’s an example of using if-then-else as until now and the new ternary operator.

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 Development section is set up easier in-client performance profiling with rules.

Three releases ago Microsoft launched the in-client profiler, a very powerful tool for investigating performance issues across extensions. Since then, profiling has become essential to identify application performance problems for customers, partners, and support, and it’s the main performance troubleshooting tool for partners.

However, due to its current nature of being an interactive capture, acquiring a performance profile requires well-defined repro steps and collaboration across stakeholders.

To make it easier and faster for customers, consultants, pro developers, partners and Microsoft support to capture a profile, and thereby lower manual collaboration and time-to-mitigate, this release will add the additional support for capturing performance profiles automatically and noninteractively in the background, based on well-defined rules triggering capture. Captured profile details can then be analyzed afterwards.

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

Feature Details

In addition to the existing interactive way of capturing a performance profile – by starting the profile, performing repro steps in the client, stopping the profiler and then analyzing the results – a new rule-based scheduling mode for capturing profiles in the background is added.

With this, a customer admin, consultant, support person or developer can set up a specific scheduled rule, for example, to profile as a given user and session type for a given duration. Once the rule is defined and enabled, the server will trigger a profile each time the rule is met. At the end of the duration, profiling will stop, and the results can be inspected to see if there are any performance issues, including intermittent or long running ones.

To create a new profile rule schedule, open the Performance Profiler Schedules page. This lists the defined schedules, and the additional schedule details. From here, you can create a new schedule.

Continue reading “New Functionality In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2024 Wave 2: Set Up Easier In-Client Performance Profiling with Rules”

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 Country and regional section is enable additional countries and regions.

Business Central is available in more countries and regions, so more businesses around the world can leverage the benefits of its cloud-based business management features.

Enabled for: Users, automatically
Public Preview: –
General Availability: Feb 2025

Feature Details

Microsoft are’re expanding the availability of Business Central to include more countries and regions through partner-led localizations. Microsoft partners create the relevant localization apps and publish them to AppSource. In combination with the built-in language offerings, Microsoft are making Business Central online available to serve customers in more than 180 countries and regions worldwide.