Dynamics 365 Business Central on-premise Wave 2: how to create databases and perform technical upgrades
I’ve explained few days ago how to change a license from customer’s one to partner’s one when working with Dynamics 365 Business Central Wave 2 on-premise. This more tricky process occours mainly because now you don’t have the Development Environment available anymore. Another problem that you could have strictly related to this is the following: how can I create a new Dynamics 365 Business… Continue...
Landing to Directions EMEA 2019…
This is the meeting’s week for all the european Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central partners (and not only them I think) and Vienna for the second time hosts a great 3 days of conference. This is the event to attend to know more about the Microsoft’s strategy for Dynamics 365 Business Central (present and future) and for making interactions with all the great partner’s community. My… Continue Reading...
Dynamics 365 Business Central on-premise Wave 2: changing license
I was sure this was an obvious topic until today, but after receiving so many desperate questions from partners that are unable to change the license for an on-premise Dynamics 365 Business Central Wave 2 database for development purposes, I’ve decided to spent few minutes for sharing this. When you install Dynamics 365 Business Central on-premise Wave 2 (or version 15) release, you’ll see… Continue Reading...
Dynamics 365 Business Central: checking Users Plans in Wave 2 release
Checking which plan is assigned to a specific user (Essential, Premium, Team Member) is become a quite different thing with the Wave 2 release (version 15). Users plans are now managed in the System Application via the Azure AD Plan module. The Plan and User Plan tables are now marked as internal, so you must use the methods provided in this module to query them. How can you check if a user is… Continue Reading demiliani’s...
Dynamics 365 Business Central APIs, Powershell, CSV and a bit of fancy notifications
In one of my last development workshops for Microsoft Italy, when talking about Dynamics 365 Business Central APIs, I’ve done a small demo on how to retrieve data from APIs directly from a Powershell script and save those data in a CSV file. Due to a lack of time, I’ve not talked too much about that script but (attendees will remember that) it ended in the following way: This is a classical… Continue Reading...
Dynamics 365 Business Central Wave 2: customizing the Base Application
In a previous post I described how you can start building extensions for the upcoming Dynamics 365 Business Central Wave 2 release on top of the Microsoft’s System Application. Today I want to show you how you can directly customize the Microsoft’s Base Application (alias, the standard Microsoft codebase). This is a top request I receive every day on all the partners I met, but before… Continue Reading...
Creating an Azure SQL Database backup via Powershell
I have several Azure SQL databases (mainly Microsoft Dynamics NAV databases) on different Azure subscriptions and often I need to download a backup for some of them. Yesterday I’ve decided to automate this process by using Powershell and the Azure REST APIs (in particular the Database – Export API). I want to have a Powershell scripts that connect to an Azure SQL Database, creates a backup… Continue Reading...
Dynamics 365 BC Wave 2 Release: What happens now?
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central Wave 2 release date is just around the corner and there are many aspects of which you should be aware. I’ve written an article for my Simplanova‘s friends that summarizes some important technical aspects to take care. You can read it at the following link: Dynamics 365 BC Wave 2 Release: What Happens Now? – Simplanova Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central is the latest...
Dynamics 365 Business Central Wave 2: on-premise and direct SQL integrations
Do you remember this post? I wrote it long time ago to explain what happens on SQL Server when you create a new table or you customize an existing table with an AL extension: the new table is created by appending the extension’s ID to the table’s name and also the customization to a standard table creates a new table with the primary key of the original table plus the newly added fields and… Continue Reading...
Dynamics 365 Business Central Wave 2: building apps on top of System Application
As you already knows from this official Microsoft post, with Dynamics 365 Business Central Wave 2 release Microsoft has splitted the application into two main modules: Base Application (that contains all the ERP business logic) and System Application (that contains all the system layer). Separation between business and system layers is a first step for a future goal to have an application… Continue Reading demiliani’s...
Dynamics 365 Business Central on-premise: checking extension’s status via Powershell
An interesting question pops out yesterday: with Dynamics 365 Business Central on-premise, how can I programmatically check if a particular extension is installed or not? The standard Powershell command (in the Microsoft.Dynamics.Nav.Apps.Management module) that gets informations about an extension in a specified Business Central Server instance is the Get-NAVAppInfo cmdlet (more info about… Continue Reading demiliani’s...
Dynamics 365 Business Central: access modifiers
If someone of you know C# or other object oriented languages in general, you know also that those languages have access modifiers. Access modifiers are keywords used to specify the declared accessibility of a member or a type. With Dynamics 365 Business Central Wave 2 release, this feature will appear also on the AL language. A table object can have an Access level with the following… Continue Reading demiliani’s Article...
“Mastering Dynamics 365 Business Central” book: please wait a bit more…
We have received in this last month lots of requests about our upcoming “Mastering Dynamics 365 Business Central” book, published by Packt: The book was planned to be released on the second half of August, but unfortunately due to a change in the management team inside Packt company (unpredictable), our book release date is delayed. I’ve explained this to all the people that contacted me… Continue Reading...
Dynamics 365 Business Central: multiple production environments and web service endpoints
One of the most interesting features announced for the Wave 2 release of Dynamics 365 Business Central is the possibility to create multiple production environments for each tenant (this will include the option for environments to be on different country-specific or region-specific versions of Dynamics 365 Business Central). In order to support this upcoming feature, endpoints of all web… Continue Reading demiliani’s...
Dynamics 365 Business Central: data encryption changements for Isolated Storage
I suggested many times in the past to every partners I met and to all the attendees to my AL courses for Microsoft Italy that the way to store sensitive data in Dynamics 365 Business Central must be the Isolated Storage usage and not custom tricks on custom tables (see here) or using the old Service Password table (deprecated in Wave 2 release). In this days, during an extension’s code… Continue Reading demiliani’s...
Azure SQL Elastic Pools: a way for saving costs with your Microsoft Dynamics ERP databases in the cloud
I’ve written a lot in the past about how you can move your existing on-premise Microsoft Dynamics NAV / Dynamics 365 Business Central databases to the cloud, how you can use SQL Server on an Azure VM or how you can start using Azure SQL (links here and here). I’ve also talked about how you can have a very performant database in the cloud by using the Hyperscale tier of Azure SQL (link
Preview of Dynamics 365 Business Central 2019 release wave 2: few notes
As you already knows, in October Microsoft will launch what is called “Dynamics 365 Business Central Release Wave 2” (platform 15) and some days ago the first public preview was available. The main “revolution” of this new release is that all is AL only. You will never find CSIDE and C/AL support from now and also no more Windows Client. Freddy Kristiansen as always has explained all in a… Continue...
Dynamics 365 Business Central: how to detect if an extension is running on SaaS or on-premise
When developing extensions for Dynamics 365 Business Central, you could have scenarios where you want to execute a procedure or a business process only if the extension is running on a SaaS environment or in an on-premise environment (or maybe having a different behaviour accordingly to the environment). To check if your extension is running on a SaaS environment, you have now a method called… Continue Reading demiliani’s...
Dynamics 365 Business Central on-premise performances to the max with Azure SQL Database Hyperscale
When you’re start implementing Dynamics 365 Business Central on-premise (because you’re not ready for the SaaS now), one of the good decision you can take today is to move your database to the cloud. I’ve written in the past different posts on when and why using Azure SQL Database or SQL Server installed on an Azure VM with Dynamics 365 Business Central (same is for NAV if you want). You can… Continue Reading...
Dynamics 365 Business Central + Azure Cosmos DB for globally distributed integrations
Today’s post wants to give an overview of a successfully deployed scenario of a geo-distributed integration between Dynamics 365 Business Central and some local B2B applications and it wants to leave a message to all: enlarge your vision to other Azure services if you want to create globally distributed architectures that rocks! The scenario: The headquarter of a large commercial company is… Continue Reading...
Dynamics 365 Business Central and API calls limits – Stefano Demiliani
Is there a limit on the number of requests that an external application can perform with the Dynamics 365 Business Central APIs? I think that this is actually an undocumented response (please correct me if I’m wrong) but the answer is absolutely yes. As every well architectured solution, Dynamics 365 Business Central service limits the number of simultaneous calls in a certain… Continue Reading demiliani’s Article on their...
using OData V4 Bound Actions – Stefano Demiliani
I’ve promised this post to some attendees of my last Dynamics 365 Business Central development workshop in Microsoft Italy (c/o Microsoft House) last week. Question was: How can I call Dynamics 365 Business Central logic from an external application? Simple answer given by all: you can publish a codeunit as web service and use the SOAP endpoint. But if I want to use OData? You cannot… Continue Reading demiliani’s Article...
using DotNet assemblies on a Docker container sandbox – Stefano Demiliani
I think that everyone of you already knows that calling custom .NET DLLs in your extension’s code is not supported in a SaaS environment, but you can still use .NET assemblies in your extensions if you explicitly target the on-premise world. You can do that by adding “target”: “Internal” in your extension’s manifest file (app.json). This is not what I normally suggest to do on… Continue Reading demiliani’s Article on their...
My 10 tips/best practices for starting with Dynamics 365 Business Central extensions – Stefano Demiliani
About one month ago during the Dynamics 365 Business Central April ’19 release launch event in Microsoft Italy, I’ve presented a technical session to partners about how to start moving their existing solutions to AL and extensions. We saw practical tips and problems that you could find during this step and in the following weeks many partners asked me lots of questions about… Continue Reading demiliani’s Article on their...
direct extensions upload to a sandbox environment – Stefano Demiliani
Do you remember this idea? I’ve suggested it last year because in my opinion one of the noisy things related to Dynamics 365 Business Central sandbox environments was the lack of a direct upload of an .app file (manual deployment of an extension). I think that this is a need for developers, but also for consultants and customers that want to test an app before making it into… Continue Reading demiliani’s Article on their...
AppSource demystified – Stefano Demiliani
When you develop solutions for Dynamics 365 Business Central, you have essentially two roads for your extensions: Release it as a per-tenant extension (PTE) Release it on AppSource I’ve talked a lot in the past months about per-tenant extensions, their release process (pros and cons) and the pains connected to it. Per-tenant extensions should be seen as “customizations”… Continue Reading demiliani’s Article on their...
check page control names between platform upgrades – Stefano Demiliani
I’ve talked a lot in the past about pros and cons of per-tenant extensions (PTE) in Dynamics 365 Business Central. Despite Microsoft’s guidance (use AppSource) this is actually the most common way for partners to deploy their extensions on a SaaS environment and this is the recommended way for developing specific customizations for a customer tenant. Unfortunately, the partner’s live… Continue Reading demiliani’s Article...
improving the user’s search experience for your extensions – Stefano Demiliani
As you already knows, with the new web experience in Dynamics 365 Business Central the menusuite object is disappeared and the Search functionality is now essential to find the right object or function you need for performing a particular business task. Dynamics 365 Business Central has a powerful built-in search engine that you can start using by going to the Tell me feature (click on the… Continue Reading demiliani’s...
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central and multiple cloud sandboxes – Stefano Demiliani
The new April 2019 release for Dynamics 365 Business Central introduced lots of new features and one of the most interesting is for sure the possibility to have more than one online sandbox. With this new release (platform 14) you will be able to create up to three sandbox environments at a time per tenant (with different names) and: You can choose to create a sandbox based on the… Continue Reading demiliani’s Article on...
It’s time to evolve your ERP… – Stefano Demiliani
Do you remember the Fiat Panda 30? It was released in the year 1980 and it was one of the best ever car models released from Fiat. Fiat Panda 30 was one of the most appreciated models ever expecially because: it was a rock it goes everywhere (you can use it as a city car but also as a tractor) it was simple to maintain it just works (ready for every usage) But today, do you ever want to… Continue Reading demiliani’s...
Bye Bye C/AL, welcome to the AL era… – Stefano Demiliani
This was in the air (Microsoft has clearly announced more than an year ago that in a year or so they will be ready to move their ERP codebase from C/AL to AL), something was under NDA and cannot be blogged but finally at Directions ASIA for the first time the plans were officially revealed in a clear way: April ’19 release (full of new features and with great improvements also in… Continue Reading demiliani’s Article on...
Dynamics 365 Business Central CU04 and SOAP Web Services changements – Stefano Demiliani
As you already knows, Microsoft has rolled up in these days the Cumulative Update 4 for Dynamics 365 Business Central. Unfortunately, there’s an (actually) undocumented breaking change that has affected lots of customers: if you have previously published some codeunits as SOAP web services, after this update if you try to reference your previously published web services you can’t… Continue Reading demiliani’s Article on...
online sandbox makes you crazy? Maybe remember these points. – Stefano Demiliani
There are many areas in Dynamics 365 Business Central SaaS that are source of headaches for users and partners and I see often that one of that areas is the online sandbox environment. With this quick post, I want to try clearing some “foggy aspects” related to the online sandbox environment that I see every day and that generates noise and doubts/confusion: You can currently… Continue Reading demiliani’s Article on their...
Azure DevOps for Dynamics 365 Business Central projects – Stefano Demiliani
Together with Microsoft Italy, we’re pleased to announce an full day of Azure DevOps overview for Dynamics 365 Business Central developers and consultants. Event details and agenda can be found here. In the first part of the day we’ll see a full overview of the Azure DevOps features, while in the second part we’ll go in-depth about the DevOps features and strategies for… Continue Reading demiliani’s Article on their...
Using Dynamics 365 Business Central APIs in Microsoft Graph – Stefano Demiliani
2 days ago Microsoft has announced the availability of Dynamics 365 Business Central APIs in Microsoft Graph. Microsoft Graph is an interesting platform that permits you to have a unique gateway for REST APIs that spans across multiple Microsoft services (I’ve talked about it some days ago in my post about the interaction with Teams). Dynamics 365 Business Central is now one of the… Continue Reading demiliani’s Article on...
how to create extensions now? – Stefano Demiliani
As publicly announced yesterday, the February 2019 Developer Preview for Dynamics 365 Business Central launches the first public version of the application where all the base code is converted from C/AL to AL. If you open the old C/SIDE Development Environment, what you can immediately see is that you’ve only few system tables and system codeunits but no other application objects: how to create extensions now? – Stefano DemilianiBlog...
Dynamics 365 Business Central and Microsoft Teams integration part 2 – Stefano Demiliani
About one week ago I’ve written a post on how to integrate Dynamics 365 Business Central with Microsoft Teams and after that post I’ve received a lot of questions (so surprised that the topic was so hot). My goal was to write a message to a Teams channel from Dynamics 365 Business Central because I think that (at least for my customer’s base) this is the most interesting and useful… Continue Reading demiliani’s Article on...
how to integrate them? – Stefano Demiliani
Microsoft Teams is the new Microsoft’s collaborative platform for collaborative working and I’m quite sure that quite soon everyone of you will use this platform as a Skype replacement (at least for business). One of the request I’m receiving often is why Microsoft has not directly integrated Teams on Dynamics 365 Business Central. I agree, I think that this is something that… Continue Reading demiliani’s Article on their...
Moving an on-premise Dynamics 365 Business Central database to Azure SQL via Powershell – Stefano Demiliani
If I have an on-premise installation of Dynamics 365 Business Central, can I move my database from a local SQL Server to Azure SQL by automating this task (no manual processing)? I’ve received this question in a forum some days ago and I remember that I had previously created a script for this task in the past. Today I’ve found it on my repos and it’s the time to share it 🙂 Moving… Continue Reading demiliani’s Article on...
Dynamics 365 Business Central and direct printing – Stefano Demiliani
This seems to be one of the hottest “problems” when using Dynamics 365 Business Central SaaS: actually you cannot directly print a document on a printer, but you need to open the PDF file and then print from the browser. This could be ok for documents or for other not so repetitive tasks, but it could be a problem on scenarios like warehouse or production and so on, where you need to… Continue Reading demiliani’s Article...
extensions disappeared in Sandbox environment – Stefano Demiliani
I saw different tickets and questions related to the title’s topic in the last weeks and I think there’s the need for a clarification. I wrote a post some months ago by explaining the Dynamics 365 Business Central SaaS tenant upgrade process that Microsoft has in place (you can find it here) but there are some strange behaviours that start appear to partners and that must be… Continue Reading demiliani’s Article on their...
April 2019 release wave features – Stefano Demiliani
Microsoft has revealed to the general public the new Dynamics 365 Business Central features planned to be released in the April 2019 wave (from April through September 2019). Here a quick summary of what to attend (so be prepared 😉 ): Web experience improvements: New shortcuts Work date settings Company indicator Totals for lists Improved search Advanced personalization… Continue Reading demiliani’s Article on their...
Object IDs things to know – Stefano Demiliani
I think that today everyone of you knows that with Dynamics 365 Business Central we have the following rules for Object IDs: 50.000-99.999: per tenant/customer customizations (no AppSource). 1.000.000-60.000.000: RSP range for partners that have an ISV solution for on premise / D365BC. When used in Business Central these extensions are obtained as apps from
Storing sensitive data for your extension? Use the Isolated Storage! – Stefano Demiliani
This is a quick post to signal a “worst practice” I’ve see today in a partner’s extension. This extension needs to save some private data and the partner has decided to use the Service Password table for that scope. The Service Password table is a particular table (ID 1261, present also in NAV) with the following structure: This table was born in the NAV era for implementing the
a UI for managing your Dynamics 365 Business Central/Dynamics NAV containers – Stefano Demiliani
Do you know what Portainer is? In simple words, it’s a simple management solution for Docker and it consists of a web UI that allows you to easily manage your Docker containers, images, networks and volumes. All is based on a single container that can run on any Docker engine (Linux or Windows). Have you ever thinked on having something similar for Dynamics 365 Business Central?… Continue Reading demiliani’s Article on...
Dynamics 365 Business Central End of year 2018 Survey – Stefano Demiliani
During this entire year 2018 the Microsoft Dynamics ERP family has changed (and you know that for sure) and Microsoft has pushed a lot for helping customers and partners to “change their mind” and embrace concepts like Cloud, SaaS and Extensions. The new ERP era has a name and it’s Dynamics 365 Business Central. During this year I had the pleasure to work with Microsoft Italy for a… Continue Reading demiliani’s Article on...
recommending extensions – Stefano Demiliani
There’s an interesting feature in Visual Studio Code that I see it’s quite unknown to all but that internally we use often when working with distributed teams: extensions recommendations. What is this? Everyone of you already knows that Visual Studio Code can become more and more productive if you add the right extensions for your work and your programming language. Visual Studio… Continue Reading demiliani’s Article on...
things to know – Stefano Demiliani
I’ve written in the past how to use .NET assemblies in AL for your on-premise extensions and all is also officially documented here, but I think there are some tricky aspects that must be more explicited: In order to use your .NET assemblies (DLLs), in Visual Studio Code you need to set the assemblyProbingPaths option to point to the folders containing the assemblies that you will… Continue Reading demiliani’s Article on...
upgrades and data migration “things to know” – Stefano Demiliani
Despite the Microsoft ERP proposition (on-premise vs SaaS), many customers are still full with doubts on what is the best choice for them: am I ready to switch to a fully cloud-based solution or do I need more time for this transformation? Can I switch to a fully SaaS environment at steps? What about data migration and platform upgrades? I’ve written an article for Simplanova… Continue Reading demiliani’s Article on their...
Using Azure DevOps for managing your Dynamics 365 Business Central projects – Stefano Demiliani
All the people that were on my Dynamics 365 Business Central Development courses for Microsoft Italy (and that will be in the next months) already knows that one of the topic that I always I try to emphasize is related to source code management. Source Code Management (SCM) is a must to have when working with AL (code is now on files and not inside the database as in C/AL) and you… Continue Reading demiliani’s Article on...