Tag: Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2023 Wave 2

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 thirtieth of the new functionality in the Application section is Use standard terminology for project management.

Microsoft are making it easier to work with project accounting by aligning the terminology in the product and documentation to use terms you’d expect. Specifically, Microsoft are renaming entities that were called “jobs” to “projects.” The goal is to improve the user experience, the clarity of the documentation, and the consistency of the terminology across the application.

Enabled for: Users, automatically
Public Preview: Mar 2024
General Availability: To be announced

Feature Details

For a long time now, Microsoft have referred to project accounting features as “jobs,” which has caused confusion in the community because that’s not the term that people who work with project accounting expect. Microsoft are happy to announce that they’re addressing this legacy problem. To clarify the true nature and purpose of the project accounting features for various types of businesses, they’re replacing the term “job” with “project” in the user interface and documentation. For example, entities such as job tasks, job journals, and job planning lines are now project tasks, project journals, and project planning lines. The renaming won’t break existing integrations and customizations because they’re only updating the captions in the user interface and the terms in their documentation. Microsoft aren’t touching the names of the underlying table and field objects.

My Opinion

I like this change. I did some work a while ago and it was a little confusing for people that everything referred to jobs instead of projects, which was the term they were used to using. Also good, that it is just a caption change and won’t break any customisations or integrations.

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 twenty-ninth of the new functionality in the Application section is Use general ledger account revaluation for more accurate financial statements.

With a new setup on the G/L account card, you can now run G/L Revaluations for accounts with transactions in foreign currencies. This enables you to generate a more accurate financial statement with little need to keep separate spreadsheets.

Enabled for: Users, automatically
Public Preview: Mar 2024
General Availability: To be announced

Feature Details

If you use general ledger accounts to register balance sheet items that are denominated in foreign currencies, a revaluation of the balances is often required before you produce financial statements for your business.

Until now, most businesses have used either a bank account or a vendor account to register and track such assets and transactions. They’ve had to keep the bank or vendor account separate from others, and to make it work they’ve had to maintain an expanded setup for posting groups.

The G/L Revaluation feature simplifies revaluations. For the general ledger accounts that you use for revaluations, you can turn on a general ledger account subledger that will hold the original currency value of the transaction and any adjustments you made using the Adjust Currency Exchange Rate batch job. Balances present in local currency (LCY) are revalued, which enables you to produce a more accurate financial statement with little effort.

Posting gains and losses during a currency exchange rate adjustment follows the normal posting routine. For example, it’s done for each setup on the currency card.

My Opinion

I’ve not done too much with multicurrency in Business Central yet, but this sounds like it could be very useful.

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 twenty-eighth of the new functionality in the Application section is Reverse a customer and vendor ledger entry with a realized gain or loss entry.

From time to time you may need to recover from mistakes, so Microsoft have improved the features for reversing transactions to save you time both when you enter data and when you validate manual postings.

Enabled for: Users, automatically
Public Preview: –
General Availability: Oct 2023

Feature Details

You can use the Reverse transaction action to reverse payments that were applied to entries that originated in foreign currencies and were adjusted using the Exchange Rate Adjustment batch job. The feature works for both purchases and sales.

The following is a simple scenario that illustrates how it works:

1. Post a sales invoice for a customer using a foreign currency.
2. Adjust the exchange rate for that currency.
3. Post a payment applied to the invoice.
4. Unapply and reverse the payment transaction, for example, from the Customer Ledger Entries page.

With this one-step (actually two because you must always unapply entries before you can reverse them), you can easily undo mistakes that also involve currency adjustments.

My Opinion

This looks like it will be useful for correctly reversing multicurrency entries for sales and purchasing. This is always a tricky area so it is nice to see it being enhanced.

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 of the new functionality in the Adapt faster with Power Platform section is Use virtual tables to expose more Business Central data in Dataverse.

Use virtual tables when you synchronize data between Business Central, Dataverse, and other Dynamics 365 apps to enhance the value of your Dynamics 365 investment. Virtual tables erase boundaries between Dynamics 365 apps and make your data accessible to users in their preferred app.

Enabled for: Users by admins, makers, or analysts
Public Preview: Mar 2024
General Availability: To be announced

Feature Details

When you synchronize data between Business Central and Dataverse, if you enable virtual tables in Business Central you can add a synthetic relationship between a synchronized entity and a virtual table. Virtual tables let you enrich the data you’ve set up to synchronize from Business Central with data you haven’t, without help from a developer.

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 User experiences section is Access worksheet pages from mobile phones.

Expanding access to more Business Central areas from a mobile device is essential these days as more users are choosing this way of working. Until now, you couldn’t open worksheet pages from your phone. Now you can, making it more convenient to work with Business Central from anywhere using the device of your choice.

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

Feature Details

With this feature, we’ve enabled special, simplified access to pages of the type ‘worksheet’ from mobile phones. Previously, this page type was only available on the Business Central mobile app from tablets or desktops.

Using a method similar to document pages, worksheet pages are rendered in a simplified version that includes a shortened header section, all worksheet lines, and a footer summary section.

To edit data, simply tap on the desired area, make changes, and confirm using the save or back button. This feature allows even complex worksheet pages to be easily operated on mobile phones.

This feature requires Business Central version 23.1 or later and applies to Android phones and iPhones

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 User experiences section is Scan barcodes with Business Central mobile app for iOS and Android.

The barcode scanner control increases warehouse users’ productivity as they can scan barcodes using the device camera or even the dedicated barcode scanner. This feature also opens scenarios for partners to create more advanced experiences using a barcode scanner.

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

Feature Details

The new barcode scanning feature supports three different scenarios, each with varying levels of complexity. The scenarios range from simple user interface (UI) features to more advanced approaches that cater to ISVs.

• Scenario 1: UI button
  The mobile client renders a user-friendly control on page fields for starting the barcode scanner. To enable the barcode scanning action on a field, the ExtendedDatatype property in AL code must be set to Barcode. Pages with such fields, which are only supported for text and code data types, will automatically display a barcode scanning button in the UI, enabling scanning via the device camera. This scanning is highly efficient and responsive, featuring mobile OS level processing and supporting the most well-known 1D and 2D barcode formats. Once a barcode is scanned, its value is entered in the field on the page, and the focus moves to the next quick-entry field on the page. This feature is supported on both iOS and Android platforms.
• Scenario 2: AL action
  AL developers are also able to trigger the barcode scanning UI via an AL-based action, so the barcode scanning can be started via a button, link, or some other semiautomated logic (for instance, when a page is opened). Also supported on iOS and Android platforms, this scenario uses the same camera-based scanning technology as scenario 1 and returns the scanned barcode value to AL code for further processing.
• Scenario 3: Barcode event
  This scenario targets professional hardware devices, typically with laser-based barcode scanners, offering greater flexibility to developers. It is only supported by hardware barcode scanners, such as Zebra or Datalogic, running Android 11 and above (there’s no support for iOS). With this scenario, developers register a barcode subscriber that listens for subsequent barcode events on the AL side. When the hardware scans a barcode, its value is sent to the Business Central mobile app and then to AL code. In other words, AL code can intercept an event from an Android device and process the decoded barcode further. Additionally, this scenario supports scanning barcodes and building up a document without interacting with any UI.

My Opinion

As I said in the article on the Print and Scan Barcodes new feature, adding barcode scanning in by default into Business Central is a very good thing; it’s nice to see these apps for Android and iOS to complement the support for scanning itself.

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 User experiences section is Mark fields as read-only when customizing UI.

Business Central offers a powerful suite of user interface (UI) customization tools that empowers customers to quickly optimize the experience for individual users, for each role, or for the entire organization. Customers often ask their supporting partner to simplify how data is presented on a page, to improve readability and optimize data entry. Now, customers can self-serve by making fields non-editable directly in the UI, adding to the existing UI simplification capabilities such as hiding or moving fields on the page.

Enabled for: Users, automatically
Public Preview: Sep 2023
General Availability: Oct 2023

Feature Details

Business Central now includes the following:

• Make fields non-editable: When customizing the UI, use the context menu to specify that a field should be read-only. You can always undo your customization later. Setting the editable state of a field is not a security feature and should only be used to optimize pages for readability and efficient data entry. This enhancement does not allow making fields editable if the application developer has specified that a field should be read-only.
• Choose the scope of your change: Personalize your own workspace or roll out the change safely for one or more roles (profiles) starting with a sandbox or directly in production.

Try it out

To experience making fields read-only, sign in to Business Central and follow this example (or similar):

1. Navigate to the Profiles (Roles) list and choose Customize Pages for your current profile.
2. When the new tab loads, navigate to the Item card or another page of your choice.
3. For any editable field, bring up the field customization menu and choose Lock editing.

My Opinion

This is a very welcome enhancement which, due to its simplicity, I am surprised wasn’t already in Business Central. It’s been quite a common request from clients when showing them how to personalise pages by adding, moving or removing fields, to also set them to disabled. Unfortunately, so far we’ve had to say it can’t be done; fortunately, with this enhancement we can now show them how to make fields read-only.

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 of the new functionality in the Service and platform section is Service-to-service apps and device license users can schedule tasks.

In typical commerce, point of sale, and warehousing scenarios, where there’s a high volume of transactions and workloads to be processed by service-to-service apps or device license users, the ability to schedule tasks and execute them in background sessions can greatly improve throughput and reduce risk of errors.

Enabled for: Users, automatically
Public Preview: –
General Availability: Oct 2023

Feature Details

Scheduling tasks has been enabled for app (S2S) and device license users since the updates 21.2 and 22.5, respectively. In situations that required processing many transactions and workloads—such as posting sales orders, printing receipts, and updating inventory—S2S apps and device license users can now increase throughput by parking these workloads as scheduled tasks that will be automatically and asynchronously run later in background sessions. In this way, they avoid waiting for the completion of these workloads and reduce the risk of errors, timeouts, and performance issues that may occur if processing these workloads synchronously.

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 of the new functionality in the Service and platform section is New operational limits on scheduled tasks and web requests improve throughput.

The new operational limits will improve protection, ensure fairness among users, and inspire elasticity and scalability of their service, while providing higher throughput for environments with many users.

Enabled for: Users, automatically
Public Preview: Nov 2023
General Availability: –

Feature Details

Business Central online handles diverse customer workloads with varying load patterns based on seasonality and many other factors, such as the number of active users, external integrations, BI and analytics tasks, and more. To manage these workloads efficiently, Microsoft have built a highly automated system that performs traffic management, load balancing and distribution, scheduled task execution, and capacity allocation based on the factors mentioned. Microsoft continuously improve the elasticity and scalability of their service with more insights to provide the highest performance and throughput for all customers and their workloads.

Microsoft are excited to announce some of these improvements in this release, specifically their increased operational limits. The new limits will significantly benefit their customers with large, complex environments that have many users, scheduled tasks, or web service integrations. They substantially raise the number of web service requests that can be submitted, as well as the number of scheduled tasks and web service requests that can be concurrently processed in each environment.

Continue reading “New Functionality In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2023 Wave 2: New Operational Limits on Scheduled Tasks and Web Requests Improve Throughput”

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 of the new functionality in the Service and platform section is Synchronize multiple Business Central companies with the same Dataverse environment.

Unlock scenarios where multiple companies must access data in the same Dataverse environment. This enables partners to build new experiences when working in more than one company.

Enabled for: Users, automatically
Public Preview: Sep 2023
General Availability: Oct 2023

Feature Details

When you set up the connection to Dataverse, you can select several Business Central companies from one Dataverse environment.
You can enable multicompany synchronization for each table mapping. On the Integration Table Mappings page, select the Enable Multicompany Synchronization checkbox. Enabling multicompany synchronization has the following effects:

• Removes company filters on user- or team-owned tables, such as the Account and Contact tables.
• Makes sales quotes and orders synchronization more restrictive with respect to the company filter. You must use the company picker in Dataverse or Dynamics 365 Sales to specify the Business Central company that will process a particular document.
• Doesn’t affect tables that are organization-owned, such as the Currency table.

You can open coupled records in different companies using the Open in Business Central action in Dataverse or Dynamics 365 Sales.

Continue reading “New Functionality In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2023 Wave 2: Synchronize Multiple Business Central Companies With the Same Dataverse Environment”