Rec.LockTable – Good Practice? Or Bad Practice?
Sometimes, “best practices” turn into “bad practices”. And recently, with one of the best new features of Business Central that just fell in our laps (most users probably won’t realize), one good practice became not just unnecessary .. but even a bad practice. When I asked CentralQ. I got a lot of truth, but also (what I believe) misinterpreted stuff. So – lets write a post, and...
Telemetry and Companies
I don’t know about you – but when working with Telemetry, I found it sometimes tedious to map certain traces to actual customers (names of the company, that is). Here’s a small post on how I handle it today. We (our company – we are a partner of a multitude of Business Central customers) have one endpoint that collects all traces from all customers. I know some partners have an endpoint… Continue...
Microsoft Dynamics 365 2024 Release Wave 1 plan for Business Central
Microsoft just released the plans for the next major release wave. I’m not going to explain what they mean with “waves” anymore – I did that in length in one of my previous posts (Microsoft Dynamics 365 2023 Release Wave 2 plan for Business Central (waldo.be)). Spoiler: not a fan! I have a hunch that the content that I will be sharing is not going to be 100% complete. Two reasons for…...
Speed up your automated tests without really doing anything..
Here’s a Christmas present from me for you: a short, but may be fore some people a very liberating post on how to speed up your tests in your pipeline, without doing anything “real” ;-). The problem We have made “tests” mandatory in our company. What that means: every single pullrequest is being code reviewed, and in the code review, we check for either a changed or new tests. That has…...
A BC Telemetry story … Monitor your Telemetry Usages!
I recently had a very scary thing happening on our Telemetry setup, that I would have never expected, and was glad I was able to catch it in time. TL;DR Any extra action on your Business Central environment can cause an explosion of telemetry signals, which possibly turns into an insane Azure bill. Therefore, it’s important to monitor and analyze your Telemetry usage, so you can take… Continue Reading waldo’s...
My Directions EMEA 2023
Directions EMEA 2023 is just around the corner, and I’m looking very much forward to it! And so should you! ;-). Since last year in Hamburg – which was clearly the best edition of all – they have set high expectations. At least for me ;-). It was the first edition to have “deep dive” sessions, which they will pursue this year as well – and the venue .. oh boy .. the venue was...
Business Central vNext (v23) – The “new data model”
This is just going to be a brief post, because there have been other blogs about this topic – I just wanted to add a small piece on top of it ;-). Our two Italian friends Stefano and Duilio already wrote some blogs about the upcoming performance improvements regarding the new feature in Business Central, that includes a new data model for table extensions. In Short: in stead of having a… Continue Reading...
Analyzing Deadlocks in Business Central with Telemetry
Not too long ago, I was (and still am) challenged with analyzing deadlocks at a specific customer. And in all honesty – that was not easy, because, you know, deadlocks is something on SQL – and it’s not like we have a lot of access to SQL tools. What are deadlocks? I’m not going to lie – I can’t explain it better than Wikipedia does : In concurrent computing, deadlock is any… Continue...
Microsoft Dynamics 365 2023 Release Wave 2 plan for Business Central
It’s that time again: the plan for the next wave is there! Erik Hougaard already covered the plan – and in good habit – I’ll do the same in blog-form (I still hate making videos – or getting content from watching them – I’m clearly getting too old ;-)). I’ll do as I always do: focus on what I’m interested in – give my own perspective – and basically ignore the...
BCTechDays 2023 – Final thoughts
BCTechDays is over, and it’s time for an (almost) traditional BCTechDays aftermath :-). A short one this time .. What an edition is was again . Too bad I simply had to spend all the time I could find to prep for my own session with Vjeko. But more on that later. This year, it was the first edition (that I can remember) in June. This meant: summertime! And man, have we known. I have… Continue Reading waldo’s Article...
Analyze (the lack of) Partial Records with Business Central Telemetry
I’ve been working with Business Central Telemetry a lot the last coulple of months, having to deal with deadlocks and such. And while doing so, quite some new ideas came to mind that I’d like to investigate by means of Telemetry. But first, a disclaimer I’m absolutly not an expert. Probably there are better ways for everything I’m doing, and please, let me know if there are! I’m a… Continue Reading...
Get-NAVAppInfo gives different results in v22
Just a small heads-up that made us scratch our heads for a while.. . In the new version of Business Central (2023 Release Wave 1 – aka v22), the PowerShell CmdLet “Get-NAVAppInfo” now gives one more dependency in the “dependencies” collection. Or as pictures say more than a thousand words: V21 and below: But from V22, we also get Microsoft’s “Application” dependency in that…...
Dynamics 365 Business Central in 2023 release wave 1
It’s always nice having to prep a webinar about “what’s new in Business Central”. It makes you being very busy with what’s next, and forces you to dive into it :-). Not always easy though, because – even today – there isn’t too much documentation online yet (it’s not fully released either, so .. quite obvious). So, while prepping this, I did take some notes, which I’d be...
“Days of Knowledge” coming up!
A short heads-up! Time is running out, and if you want to be part of it, you’ll have to act fast! Days of Knowledge 2023 is a series of conferences organized by DirectionsEMEA (aka “Directions4Partners“). The conferences are focused on education, sharing knowledge and “upgrading” Business Central professionals across the industry. Each event consists of 2 conference days packed with… Continue...
Dynamics 365 Business Central and DataTransfer: be careful!
Not too long ago, Stephano shared a concern regarding “TryFunctions”. It’s a must read, and you can find it here: Dynamics 365 Business Central and TryFunctions: be careful! – Stefano Demiliani. I think it’s important to warn people about things that act different than people might think – so let me take this opportunity to put yet another thing on the table. DataTransfer Since… Continue Reading...
Inexplicable delays when calling (OnPrem) Business Central API’s (and how to solve it)
So, I was reminded recently during a twitter thread about an issue we had been having that we investigated quite thoroughly to figure out what was going on. The issue We always try to upgrade all customers to latest release – and we encountered some delays in API communications, which seemed to got worse at every new upgrade. At some point, every API call took from 500 to 1000… Continue Reading waldo’s Article on...
A Business Central “Upgrade Code” saga…
Not too long ago, we had an upgrade issue at a customer: the upgrade timed out, and after investigation, it was simply because our upgrade code: it took too long to modify 130000 records (well – and quite some validations, I admit, but still – it’s not that much, is it?). This made me hold on to some things that I had been doing even for my own apps (like the waldo.BCPerftool (which I’m now… Continue...
The Business Central “Data Search” app (under the hood)
One of the things that totally slipped by me, is the new app from Microsoft that apparently was released in the last wave called “Data Search“. It’s a simple, but powerful concept: Search for “any” record in your data. Well, any record that you have set up to search for at least ;-). It is explained here: Search for Specific Data – Business Central | Microsoft Learn Yeah, I know,… Continue...
What objects were added?
Yesterday, I got a question that I found was too difficult to answer: “What tables were added in 20.5?” The reason for this question was simple: we need to update the manually created permissionsets in order for new tables to be supported after an upgrade. So – what tables were added? There are a number of ways to deal with this, like exporting the AllObj-table from both versions, and do… Continue Reading...
Setting the Sampling Interval for (in-client) performance profiling Business Central
Here’s a small blogpost about an undocumented, but not uninteresting “feature” (at least not in my book ;-)). Performance Profiling You’re probably very much aware of the Performance Profiler in Business Central: an ability to monitor code execution in terms of “durations” and “hit count”, and having a view on how the code/process performed.As a first version, we had in v19 the AL…...
My BCTechDays 2022
This does not need any introduction or will not come as a surprise – BCTechDays is just around the corner. At the time writing this blogpost, it’s only a mere 20 days away – and quite honestly, I’m starting to crap my pants . Why? Excitement, fear, nerves – you pick ;-). Why? Well, because also this year, I’ll be quite busy: 2 sessions, 2 workshops and an ISV… Continue Reading...
Microsoft Dynamics 365 2022 Release Wave 2 plan for Business Central
You cannot have missed it: the “2022 Release Wave 2” plans are out! There have been blogs, there have been tweets, and yes, Erik Hougaard already did a video about it as well of course – and as I always do – I’ll go over the plan myself, focused mostly on the Business Central part – and within that focus, a focus on the tech part ;-). And this time .. In the current state of the plans .....
Boolean buttons messed up in Chrome and Edge – what now?
There has been a lot going on about this the past couple of days – especially on Yammer and social media. This post is merely to help spreading the information. TL;DR As a picture says more than a 1000 words – let me steal a picture from Natalie Karolak (follow her, if you don’t already – she’s THE BC Docs Librarian ;-)) from this thread on Twitter. Here is what you might have… Continue Reading...
Should Microsoft keep installing apps behind your back?
In a way – I’m not going to tell anything new here. Microsoft has been adding apps to your environment for many years already. It’s just that a recent discussion on Twitter basically led to a general – let’s say – “feeling”, that made me decide to share my view on the matter as well :-). TL;DR When you are in BC SaaS, your environment is getting upgraded automatically once per month...
BCTechDays 2022
After too long (last edition was in 2019), we finally can look forward to a new edition of THE best technical conference for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central: BCTechDays (formally known as NAVTechDays). If you run through my blog (or simply search for “NAVTechDays“), you probably notice that I’ve always been ecstatic about this conference. And the reason is that BCTechDays simply… Continue Reading...
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central “Offering Apps”
Don’t worry – you didn’t miss any information regarding Microsoft coming out with a new type of apps . This is merely a post where I’ll explain a solution that I had to go through, and some thoughts that might be interesting for you as well ;-). Previous post, I explained about a “booboo” that I did. Let me go a bit deeper into that, and explain why it’s still a path we’d like to pursue...
Offerings are not “offerings”, and library apps are not “library apps”
I did a “little” boo-boo: I totally misunderstood something from the overly documented AppSource world, which has quite an impact for us to go forward. I’d like to apologize beforehand for the rant I’m about to embark – I just wanted to make sure this only happens to us and not you ;-). What happened? We’re in the process of uploading all our apps to AppSource. In total about 45 apps,…...
15 years waldo’s blog
Hi y’all. Get ready for the most useless post you’ll read all day. Not to me, though. I’d like to share a proud moment with you awesome people. Today, I’m blogging for 15 years ! I remember back in the day when I got my MVP Award, I was so proud that I actually wanted to give back to the community. I know, “wanting to give back” after I received an award because “giving back” sounds...
Business Central SaaS Environment Triggers
So – thanks to my colleague Márton Sági (the AL Studio guy ;-)), I came across a quite interesting, but highly under-documented ability today in Business Central. One that makes the below post purely based on assumptions ;-), since it’s undocumented, and resides only in the platform part of Business Central (so there isn’t much code to drill down into ;-)). Here is my assumption-based… Continue Reading...
Business Central API – leave out CompanyId from the URL
Here’s a nice trick I wanted to share with you simply because I didn’t know this was possible (probably a lot of you already know, but if not – here you go ;-)). It could come in handy in some situations. You probably are very aware about how we’re supposed to use Business Central API’s in general. Like: Get the CompanyId from a “companies” endpointThen use that Id to get to the data…...
Microsoft Dynamics 365: 2022 Release Wave 1 plan (Business Central)
The “2022 Release Wave 1” plans are already out there for quite a while – Erik Hougaard already did his video about it – and there are already blogs out there about it – so it’s about time that I do that as well (as I have been doing that for the previous major releases as well ;-)). As always, I’ll be focusing on the Business Central part of the plans – and even more – usually I...
Multi-line text search in VSCode (with RegEx)
Small post – just because I needed it recently – and it made me think of this little gem that I still had to share: what if you have to search over multiple lines in multiple files in VSCode .. something that actually might happen more than you want to admit. I actually never knew how to do this decently, until I came across this tweet: Well… after some digging I found it… Continue Reading waldo’s Article...
Happy Holidays!
Hey y’all. I just wanted to send my Holiday wishes to the community I value so much. It’s been another crazy year in terms of the world being upside down by this freaking virus. However, it has also shown us how strong this amazing community is – finding new ways to connect, share insights, or just hang out: The Beerinar, Virtual Conferences like DynamicsCon, the BC Launch Event,… Continue Reading waldo’s...
The “Universal Code Initiative”
A few months ago, I blogged about a new initiative from Microsoft: Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central Publisher program. At Directions EMEA, we got more insights to the program. There is still the same focus and intention – but with a different approach and name. I’d like to go more into details on that, as it simply gives me an opportunity to say “I told you so” a number… Continue Reading...
Contributing to “ALGuidelines.Dev”
I recently blogged about this new initiative .. the revival of the “NAV Design Patterns Wiki”: ALGuidelines.Dev . Time to talk a bit more on how you can contribute. I’m documenting this while I’m writing my very first pattern (I admit, I had this blogpost laying around for a while ;-)). Disclaimer We do have a contribution-page here: “Guide to Fork & PR :: AL Guidelines” that kind of…...
The “ALGuidelines.Dev” initiative – revival of a diamond
The cat is already out of the bag – since a few days, people already discovered it .. but the plan was to “launch” the initiative today .. so .. here we go .. ;-). As you can see on one of my previous posts – I initially was planning to share a bunch of guidelines with you, starting with a first: a reference to the existing “NAV Design Patterns Wiki“. I did this simply because that is…...
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2021 release wave 2 Launch Event
As I mentioned on October 1st – we have a new release: Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2021 release wave 2 is a fact! Since today, Microsoft released the recorded sessions that goes with this release. Earlier releases, we really got an online event, with Q&A capabilities and all. But since this release, we only get recordings. I can only assume it’s because we’re nearing the… Continue Reading...
AL Development guideline 1: the “NAV Design Patterns Wiki”
Not too long ago, I followed one of Steve Endow’s amazing livestreams where he was talking about BC Coding Guidelines together with Henrik and Jeremy. And what I noticed was that it appeared to be that “coding guidelines” – whatever they are for you – are hard to find – at least if you’re searching for guidelines in the new AL Language. I was like, wait a minute, I know I have been...
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2021 release wave 2 is a fact!
It’s here! v19 or in other words “Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2021 release wave 2” is released! Usually, when Microsoft releases their plans about an upcoming release (like it did some time ago), I create one or more blogs about it. I didn’t do that for this release. No particular reason other than time. It’s extremely busy on my end (not going to complain...
Can you “force” VSCode extensions on your team’s PC’s?
You must have seen the launch of Vjeko’s extension: the “AL Object ID Ninja”. If you haven’t, well, let me make your day and show you some resources: AL Object ID Ninja – Vjeko.comAL Object ID Ninja v1.1.0 released – Vjeko.comAL Object ID Ninja – Visual Studio Marketplacevjekob/al-objid: Vjeko.com AL Object ID Ninja (github.com) In short: it’s a VSCode extension that will help you… Continue...
The complexity of complex return types – Looping a record return type (extended)
Short post Do you remember my post about The complexity of complex return types? And the update The complexity of complex return types (updated) – Looping a record return type? Well, since the release of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 18.4, I have a another update for you! Let’s call it an “extension” for the update . As I mentioned in the second post that it actually WAS… Continue Reading...
Protected Variables
“Protected Variables” might not be a familiar topic in the Business Central world. It was at least not that familiar to me ;-). So I wanted to make a small post to make this more known in the community, so that at least you are aware that it exists .. and it might give you some more extensibility options that you might not have considered.. . The concept is simple: protected variables are… Continue Reading...
The complexity of complex return types (updated) – Looping a record return type
Update for my previous post: The complexity of complex return types. (I could have just updated the post, but since that wouldn’t trigger the people that already read it, I decided to create a small update just to pin your attention to the following.. After a few comments from Marknitek and Dennis Reineck, I realized that I forgot one important ability, that actually makes it (kind of)… Continue Reading waldo’s...
The complexity of complex return types
Since Business Central 2021 Wave 1 – v18, if you will – we are able to return about ANY type from a procedure. For many languages, that’s the most normal thing, but for Business Central’s AL language, it was not. So, at the time this was announced, many people were ecstatic and talking about it in sessions, on blog posts, on Twitter and so on. And me as well. In fact, I did a session on… Continue Reading...
Business Central Default APIs are not localized – or are they?
Good news. You’re probably all familiar with the great work Microsoft is doing on providing us a huge set of useful out-of-the-box API’s. No? Well, you can find all the information right here: API(V2.0) for Dynamics 365 Business Central – Business Central | Microsoft Docs For Belgium, these have been useless in many situations though. Simply said: the Belgian localization has some… Continue Reading...
Documenting your Business Central (custom) APIs with OpenAPI / Swagger
For reasons that are not too important, I am trying to find a way to “describe my custom APIs”. You know. You’re at a project, you had to implement an integration with a 3rd party application, and you develop some custom APIs for it. When done, you have to communicate this to the 3rd party for them to implement the integration, so you need to pass the documentation, and kind of help through… Continue Reading...
A somewhat easier way to generate a DGML Dependency Graph of your Business Central extensions
You might have read my post “Visualize app.json dependencies in VSCode (using GraphViz)” where I explained “another” way to generate a dependency graph. Another than what? Well – other than the DGML that was just announced on Microsoft’s Launch Event of Business Central 2020 Wave 2 as being “on the drawing board”. Well – today Stefano Demiliani found out that the first bits are...
Stabilize your Job Queue – a few tricks
For a few people, this will be a very “current problem”, for other, that have suffered through years of “unstable” NAS and Job Queue for that matter .. this upcoming blogpost might be interesting. The primary reason for this post is an issue that – after quite some debugging – seemed to be an issue introduced in version 17.4 (and currently also v18.0). But I decided to tackle the issue in a…...
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central Publisher program
The last couple of months, there has been quite some questions from ISVs (and especially the “old” ISV’s) on how to register their apps in their specific situations. Just to name a few: I only have OnPrem business – and I want to create a new product. How do I get a new object range?Do I still need to go through the CfMD program to certify my apps?App range? RSP range? What the hell is… Continue Reading...
Design Considerations for Upgrade Codeunits
Recently, in our product, we enabled support for the new “Item References” in Business Central. Basically meaning: when upgrading to the new version of our product, we wanted to: Make sure our code supported the new “Item Reference” table in stead of the old “Item Cross Reference” tableAutomatically enable the “Item Reference” feature” (necessary, because when your code depends on...