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 fourth of the new functionality in the Governance and Administration section is Include or exclude tables from cloud migration.

Explicitly including or excluding certain tables from cloud migration runs will make it easier to specify what data you want to migrate to the cloud.

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

Feature Details

Some customers need the flexibility to migrate only specific data to the cloud, based on their unique requirements. Microsoft now make it possible to specify whether any table is included or excluded as part of the cloud migration—as long as the table is accessible by AL code and not marked as internal or on-premises 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 twenty-eighth of the new functionality in the Development section is Define multi-worksheet datasets for Excel reports.

AL developers can now define AL report datasets so that when running with Excel layouts, multiple top-level data items are stored in their own worksheets in Excel. This makes data models such as parent-child easier to model in Excel, and enables them to use powerful modeling tools such as PowerPivot in Excel.

Enabled for: Users by admins, makers, or analysts
Public Preview: Oct 2023
General Availability: Dec 2023

Feature Details

Prior to this release, developers who wanted to create an Excel report on a data model with multiple top-level data items, such as a parent-child relationship, had to do a lot of extra modeling in Excel to separate the two before they could use that data in the Excel layout.

With this release, the developer can set a new ExcelLayoutMultipleDataSheets property to True. The AL runtime will generate an Excel worksheet for each data item and place its data there.

Multiple sheets will be named #DataItemName, where DataItemName is the dataitem name in the report design. Adding new empty Excel layouts to the report uses the property value to determine the sheet structure.

Continue reading “New Functionality In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2023 Wave 2: Define multi-worksheet datasets for Excel reports”

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-seventh of the new functionality in the Development section is Extend general ledger posting aggregations.

Regulations in different countries and industries, and customer business practices, might require a change to how general ledger entries are aggregated during posting.

Enabled for: Users by admins, makers, or analysts
Public Preview: –
General Availability: Nov 2023

Feature Details

The Invoice Posting Buffer table has been at the center of localizations and partner customizations when changes to G/L posting are needed, or when G/L entries must be aggregated in a different way when they’re posted to the general ledger. The previous design was not extensible because the primary key in that table cannot be changed without introducing a breaking change across partner solutions and localizations. There are significant differences in this table across localizations—in particular for APAC, BE, ES, IT, NA, and RU, which has made it difficult to extract localizations to extensions.

This refactoring makes the posting process for sales, purchase, and service transactions extensible. Partners can also change the way the posting algorithm aggregates G/L entries—for example, by specific document lines, posting groups, or any tax setup that is required by local legislation. Partners can replace customizations by using the interface for G/L invoice posting, resolve legacy issues for the Invoice Posting Buffer table, and use their own implementation of G/L invoice posting.

Microsoft have removed the dependencies from the Invoice Posting Buffer table in the base application and build an invoice posting component with an interface and an extensible enum for the implementation setup.

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-sixth of the new functionality in the Development section is AppSource ISV publishers can preview their AppSource apps with select customers.

Allow AppSource ISV publishers to test and collect early feedback on the new version of their app by organizing a private preview with a select group of their customers.

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

Feature Details

When uploading an app to AppSource, publishers will be able to keep the app in preview mode. This will provide publishers with a link to the preview app that includes a custom “flight code,” which can be sent to selected customers. Customers who opt in to the preview can then install and test that app in their environments and provide feedback to the ISV.

As a publisher, you can choose the flight code, or have one generated automatically.

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-fifth of the new functionality in the Development section is Sell Business Central apps through AppSource.

For years, AppSource publishers and customers have been waiting for the ability to transact Business Central apps via the AppSource marketplace. Due to the lack of such support, publishers have had to build their own custom sales and licensing support, adding unnecessary work and maintenance. Some publishers have even delayed entry to AppSource due to this gap.

Customers haven’t been able to see pricing options for apps directly in AppSource. Instead, they had to rely on external publisher price lists and contact the publisher directly or via a reseller. Since each publisher would have their own licensing and billing process, this added additional overhead for the customer or reseller.

Microsoft are excited to announce that with the 2023 release wave 2, transacting Business Central apps through AppSource will go live after having gone through both private and public previews. Initially, credit card payment or direct billing is supported along with per-user monthly or yearly subscription licensing managed through the Microsoft admin center.

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

Feature Details

To enable transactability for an AppSource app, publishers opt in to selling through Microsoft on their existing offer in Partner Center.

Continue reading “New Functionality In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2023 Wave 2: Sell Business Central Apps Through AppSource”

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-fourth of the new functionality in the Development section is Get syntax highlighting for AL in Azure DevOps.

Syntax highlighting really improves readability of source, including AL. Until now, Microsoft have had highlighting inside of the AL Language extension editor in Visual Studio Code and in GitHub, but not in Azure DevOps, which is used by a lot of partners. There, all AL code is just shown as plain text. This is inefficient because all pull request reviews and all other code investigations are a lot slower to do without.

To address the many votes for this, and increase developer productivity, Microsoft are adding support for AL syntax highlighting in DevOps, in large thanks to an effort by Microsoft’s German partner GOB, which created the majority of the initial syntax coverage.

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

Feature Details

Syntax highlighting for AL in Azure DevOps is enabled by installing the following free extension in Azure DevOps:

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-third of the new functionality in the Development section is Add teaching tooltips on queries and report request pages.

Teaching tips are used to increase the user’s chance of success with the query or report. Using a teaching tip also facilitates an easy transition for the user to navigate to the help pane, if more help is needed.

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

Feature Details

The primary purpose of a teaching tip is to increase the user’s chance of success with the query or report. Therefore, the title and description of the teaching tip should answer the following hypothetical user questions:

• AboutTitle: What is this query/report about?
• AboutText: What can I do with this query/report?

Both of these properties (or their equivalent multilanguage versions) must be defined on the query or request page for the teaching tip to appear.

With teaching tips, you can help explain logic that is relevant to the query/report, therefore allowing users to get on with a analytics task right away without blocking them. After users dismiss a teaching tip, they can choose or hover over the query/report title in the page. This action will reopen the teaching tip.

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-second of the new functionality in the Development section is Add a new FieldGroup to an existing table.

One of the highest-voted extensibility gaps in AL is the ability to add field groups to tables through table extensions, when the table doesn’t have one. Apart from a functional gap, this also impacts moving existing on-premise customizations to extensions, be it on-premises still or to cloud.

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

Feature Details

While it’s currently possible to add a FieldGroup (a dropdown list, for example) in an extension in a new table or to add fields to an existing FieldGroup for a core table, it isn’t possible to add a FieldGroup to a core table that doesn’t have one already defined. With this new feature, table extensions will be able to add a FieldGroup to existing tables.

The way this works is that a table extension can add fields by using the “addlast” keyword in the Dropdown or Brick field groups, just as today. However, if the field group doesn’t exist on the table, which is being extended, it will be created. If multiple table extensions each add fields, the field group will contain the merged result, in the order that the extensions are loaded (first AppSource apps, then PTEs).

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-first of the new functionality in the Development section is Provide queries for users to do ad hoc data analysis across tables.

Developers can now provide queries that end users and data analysts can use to analyze data directly in the client without the need to open the page in Excel or run a report.

Enabled for: Users by admins, makers, or analysts
Public Preview: Sep 2023
General Availability: Oct 2023

Feature Details

Analysis mode was introduced as a public preview feature in 2023 release wave 1 as a new way of interacting with data on list pages. Instead of running reports using different options and filters, users can simply add multiple tabs that represent different tasks or views on the data. For more information about the analysis mode on list pages, visit Analyze list data using data analysis mode.

In this release, Microsoft take this concept even further and make it possible to also analyze data from any query, the same way as you can on a list page. (Learn more at Analyze, group, and pivot data on queries using multiple tabs.)

Continue reading “New Functionality In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2023 Wave 2: Provide Queries for Users to do Ad Hoc Data Analysis Across Tables”

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 twentieth of the new functionality in the Development section is Use the AL Language extension for Linux in preview.

To allow developers to choose the environment that fits their needs as a platform for developing amazing Business Center extensions, Microsoft are releasing a preview of the AL Language extension for Linux with the Business Central 2023 release wave 2

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

Feature Details

The AL Language extension for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central now includes a Linux variant.

Just install the extension from https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=ms-dynamics-smb.al in your Visual Studio Code installation on Linux.

Since this is a preview, feedback is particularly welcome, as usual on https://github.com/microsoft/al/issues.