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 nineteenth of the new functionality in the Development section is Show list of keys while working on AL code.

IntelliSense offers great productivity features. On request, Microsoft have now added support for suggesting available keys when calling methods accepting key parameter. This improves speed and accuracy of coding and thus productivity.

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

Feature Details

AL methods accepting keys, such as SetCurrentKey(), now have IntelliSense listing key parameters that are available. Until now it has only shown the list of fields.

Note that IntelliSense still suggests table fields, in case the developer wants to just perform sorting on specific fields. Keys are only suggested for the first parameter; subsequent parameters just suggest fields.

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 eighteenth of the new functionality in the Development section is Segment AL code and reduce naming conflicts with namespaces.

AL for Business Central will now support namespaces, similar to other code languages. Namespaces provide a way of organizing objects and code in a logical and hierarchical manner. They can be used to help avoid naming conflicts between different extensions, making it easier to maintain and understand extensions, including the relationship between different objects.

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

Feature Details

An AL file can now define a namespace at the top, which will apply to all objects in the code file. A given object can only belong to one namespace, but the same namespace can be used for multiple AL files and objects.

When objects are resolved, the closest scope is used first. Therefore, to resolve to a similarly named object in a dependent extension, the reference must use a fully qualified name. Alternatively, it’s possible to define using directives to include external namespaces and thereby omit fully qualifying names.

Because namespaces are useful for logical segmentation of extensions, the AL Explorer also shows namespaces for objects and allows grouping objects by namespace, making it easier to discover related objects, focus on app subareas, and identify inconsistencies when adding new objects.

Continue reading “New Functionality In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2023 Wave 2: Segment AL Code and Reduce Naming Conflicts with Namespaces”

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 seventeenth of the new functionality in the Development section is Document your extensions with the ALDoc tool for partners.

Business Central has a large and continuously growing number of ISV apps on AppSource, some of which are being built upon, both by apps from the same publisher, other publishers and resellers (in the form of per-tenant extensions). To aid consuming apps downstream, documentation is a major benefit, but until now it has been a large manual process to create and keep that in sync with app changes, unless the publisher has invested in automation themselves.

Based on the recent investments for generated documentation for the Business Central base, system, and other first-party applications, Microsoft are giving publishers a new ALDoc tool. This allows generating documentation from symbolic and syntactical information, code comments, and overall application structure based on input .app files. Publishers can host the resulting documentation either internally—for example, for R&D usage—or externally for downstream partners.

Generating content based on source code has many advantages such as accuracy, 100 percent reflection of the current codebase, less error-prone documentation, and time savings.

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

Feature Details

It’s Microsoft’s pleasure to announce that with the latest prerelease update of the AL Language extension for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, Microsoft have included a preview of the ALDoc tool for partners.

The ALDoc tool generates documentation from symbolic and syntactical information, code comments, and overall application structure based on input .app files. You can use it to generate internally or externally facing reference documentation for your solution.

The tool also generates a help site with the reference articles, sorted by the application structure, based on the provided custom template.

Read more about the tool in their docs Generating help with the ALDoc tool.

Also, as usual, Microsoft want to hear what you think. Use AL issues for tool feedback.

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 sixteenth of the new functionality in the Development section is Use SecretText type to protect credentials and sensitive textual values from being revealed.

With an increasing amount of integrations to external systems, it’s not uncommon in AL code to work with secrets such as credentials and other sensitive textual values. Given the need to protect these from being revealed through debugging, the latter has often been blocked through resource exposure policies, at the cost of easy troubleshooting. To support enabling debugging, while protecting credentials and other sensitive textual values from being revealed, Microsoft are introducing a new SecretText type for variables. In addition, some of the common scenarios in the system app will get support for passing in SecretText parameters for credentials—for example, the HttpClient and Isolated Storage types.

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

Feature Details

A new type, SecretText, has been added to protect credentials and other sensitive textual values from being revealed through debugging. The declaration syntax will be similar to the Text data type, with the sole difference that it won’t support constraints on the length.

SecretText will be usable as a:

• Variable value
• Return value
• Parameter value

Its use will be limited to carrying, for example, credentials from the point of creation to the destination method. The destination method must accept a SecretText value.

Continue reading “New Functionality In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2023 Wave 2: Use SecretText Type to Protect Credentials and Sensitive Textual Values From Being Revealed”

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 fifteenth of the new functionality in the Development section is Track source and build metadata on extensions.

To help track extensions that are created as part of DevOps pipelines, Microsoft are introducing Source and Build properties in the app.json manifest of extensions. This allows easily finding the relevant source repo, commit ID, and build system used to create the extension.

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

Feature Details

The app.json manifest of extensions now contains two new properties, Source and Build. These can be used to track source location and the build context.

For source, the following are supported:

• repositoryUrl, which is the URL of the repository where the source code of the project can be found.
• commit, which is an ID of the source code for the current version of the project, that allows getting back to the commit that triggered building the extension.

For build, the following are supported:

• by, which is useful for tracking the build agent/system that orchestrated the build; for example, AL-Go for GitHub.
• url, which can be used for the URL to the build system invocation where the build can be found.

You can define these values directly in the app.json, but given the dynamic nature, the usual scenario would be to set these as part of build pipelines via command line parameters for the used alc.exe compiler executable. The values passed here will overwrite any values in the app.json source file.

If using BcContainerHelper, the functions Compile-AppInBcContainer and Compile-AppWithCompilerFolder now take parameters for "SourceRepositoryUrl", "SourceCommit", "BuildBy", and "BuildUrl". These are now being set if you use AL:Go for GitHub to build your extensions.

In this release none of these values are yet surfacing in the Extension Management page, in TAC, or via PowerShell commands like NAV-AppInfo. If you want to read the values, the option is currently to use the BcContainerHelper "Extract-AppFileToFolder", which will allow getting the app.json file with the settings.

Here’s an example of build and source metadata in app.json. This is normally set by the build process and not manually.

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 fourteenth of the new functionality in the Development section is Set the default folder location for new AL projects.

The AL Language extension for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central has a command to generate a new AL project. Since the start, the folder location for projects has been fixed to the users’ Documents folder in Windows. Based on asks, Microsoft are now adding the ability for partners to define a different default location for AL projects in the settings, making the project creation workflow easier.

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

Feature Details

There is now an al.algoSuggestedFolder setting for specifying the default folder location for new AL projects. This can be set per user or per workspace, offering some flexibility in the location for new projects.

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 thirteenth of the new functionality in the Development section is Get smarter method signature recommendations in IntelliSense.

One of the most common uses of IntelliSense when authoring code is getting parameter help on methods. IntelliSense is a great help, but not when showing options that don’t apply. Until now in AL, when there were multiple method overloads, the user would have to switch between them to get help matching the chosen overload. In this release, IntelliSense will be smarter and actually prioritize the first valid overload.

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

Feature Details

The AL Language extension will now reorder and prioritize relevant overloads when the developer starts typing a method invocation. If the typed expression corresponds to a valid overload, it will always be the first recommendation and the correct active parameter will be highlighted. The rest of the recommendations will be sorted in the order of relevance based on the provided parameters.

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 twelfth of the new functionality in the Development section is Get IntelliSense for adding variables in Visual Studio Code AL debugger console.

Usually when debugging code, the developer wants to see variable contents by adding it in the debug console window. To help raise discoverability and make it easier to add variables, the debugger console window now support IntelliSense.

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

Feature Details

The console supports IntelliSense for object types and members that can be evaluated in the context of the debugger: fields, locals, globals, and member symbols that are not methods on a data type.

Microsoft still don’t allow evaluations of methods in the console.

The debugger watch window is not supported for now, due to lack of integration points with Visual Studio Code.

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 Development section is Choose between more sampling intervals for snapshot and in-client profiling.

Some releases ago Microsoft introduced a great new tool to investigate AL performance, namely profiling—either as the AL profiler for developers in a snapshot debug session from within Visual Studio Code, or as part of the in-client performance profiler accessible to customer admins and consultants as well as developers.

In the in-client performance profiler, and optionally in the AL profiler, sampling is used to determine at what intervals the system monitors what is running. At launch Microsoft supported 100ms sampling interval only. Based on feedback Microsoft are now allowing the user to choose between 50, 100 and 150ms. This allows for both finer and coarser granularity of insights, for example, to catch smaller operations and get more accurate durations, or to limit dates being captured and displayed to larger operations only.

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

Feature Details

With the launch.json snapshot configuration parameter profileSamplingInterval, AL developers can specify the interval at which the sampling will be collected. Current options are {50ms, 100ms, 150ms}. The default value is 100ms.

Continue reading “New Functionality In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2023 Wave 2: Choose Between More Sampling Intervals for Snapshot and In-client Profiling”

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 Development section is Set new output folder setting for storing app files at AL project build.

By default, when you build AL projects, the output app file is stored in the project folder. However, if you work on multiple apps that aren’t in the same workspace and depend on each other, outputting to a shared app folder can be a benefit.

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

Feature Details

In the “al.compilerOptions” settings, you can now use the “outFolder” property to specify which output folder to use when generating an app file as part of building an AL project.

This makes it easier to manage and reuse generated apps in a single location. The AL project in Visual Studio Code will still contain a node for the output file, but the file will then physically be stored outside of the project folder.

Here’s an example of saving built app files in “myappfolder” on the user’s C drive.