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...
Business Central Development Life Hacks
I haven’t exactly blogged much lately, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been active for or in the community. You might have seen my previous blogpost for example, where I explored the wonders of streaming (which is for a near future to pick up, by the way ;-)), I also have contributed a few sessions on a few occasions. One of these occasions was “Dynamics Con” – a free conference that was…...
So .. I did a stream ..
Not too long ago, I asked about opinions on whether I should just keep blogging, or if I should also jump on the streaming-wagon like many already did .. and start streaming content about business central. In fact, that poll is still on my website, and today, it says this result: So, a vast majority isn’t really waiting for me to bring out any streaming videos :-). But .. in all… Continue Reading waldo’s Article on...
Setting up docker containers with apps from AppSource
For a long time, we have been looking for a solution to be able to set up a docker environment, and then download the necessary apps from AppSource. Why? For different reasons. Like, to set up a development environment. I know we can do that in an online sandbox, but .. we’re already doing this on docker for OnPrem development, so if we could simply set up dev environments for any… Continue Reading waldo’s Article on...
Which API’s are available in my Business Central environment?
Here’s a short post with a small tip about something a lot of you probably already know. How’s that for an intro . If you remember these posts: Getting not-out-of-the-box information with the out-of-the-box web clientCheck Customer License in an OnPrem db – from the web client Then you know there’s quite a lot of information .. just under your fingertips of the web client. And… Continue Reading waldo’s...
Microsoft Dynamics 365: 2021 release Wave 1 plan
It’s that time again! Recently, Microsoft released their plans for the next major version for Dynamics 365. Quite some time ago, I started with commenting on that (I actually did that because one of the features at that point (being “code customized base app”), was something that I felt needed some criticism (and still do, by the way ;-))). So, by matter of tradition – and it being a…...
Publish & Run Current Object from VSCode – with a single command
I’m not writing a blog about every single (new) command in my “CRS AL Language Extension”. But this Sunday, I added an interesting one. One that I should have had created for a long time – but simply didn’t think of it, until Daniel (TheDenster.com) explicitly asked for it on GitHub. Just imagine, you’re building an app, with many pages, and you want to build a page, test it, build the…...
Check Customer License in an OnPrem db – from the web client
This is my first post of 2021, so I’d like to take the opportunity to wish all of you all the best, all the health, all the safety, and .. may we finally meet again in person in 2021! I’d be very happy to have much less of this: And more of this: Anyway ;-). Let’s get to the topic.. I got an internal question from our consultants on how they are able to access the license… Continue Reading waldo’s Article...
Model Driven software development for Business Central with “mdAL”
You might already have seen my session on DynamicsCon about Design Patterns. During that session, I mentioned a tool “mdAL”. If not .. well, here it is (starting at the mdAL part): This tool has seen some major updates – time to blog about it. ;-). Disclaimer I am not the developer of this tool – so not a single credit should go my way. The main developer of this tool is… Continue Reading waldo’s...
Download all Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central Source Code with PowerShell
You might wonder: why would I need this? Why would I need to download source code of Business Central, while I can simply access it through the symbols when I’m working in VSCode – or even better, while I can simply click the symbol, and look at the code from there? Well … Searchability Didn’t you ever wonder: “hey, previous version, this codeunit was still in this app – where is it… Continue...
Run your own AppSource Validation
Quite honestly, I’m fully into the process of getting our apps (about 30 of them) to AppSource. We chose to have OnPrem implementations first, basically to get the experience, and also because it just still sells better in Belgium (immediate market ;-)). Anyway .. Recently, there was a call with Microsoft with the topic “what to do in order to pass technical validation”. Given my current… Continue Reading...
Business Central V17.1 fails your pipeline .. and that’s OK
A few days ago, we upgraded our product from 17.0 to 17.1. We had been looking forward to this release, because we usually never release a product or customer on an RTM release of Business Central. So .. finally 17.1, finally we could continue to upgrade the product and start releasing this to customers before the end of the year. While this was just a minor upgrade .. things started to… Continue Reading waldo’s Article on...
Visualize app.json dependencies in VSCode (using GraphViz)
If you’ve been following the latest and greatest from Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, you must be aware about “what’s cooking in Microsoft’s Lab“. In short, Microsoft is working on a possibility to generate a DGML file for your extension that you’re compiling. A DGML file is basically a file that contains all code cross references. Remember “where used” .. well .. that! I can...
Upgrade to Business Central V17 (part 1) – The Workflow
Recently, we have been going through upgrading our 65 apps to the newest release (v17). You might wonder: upgrade? Wasn’t this supposed to be seemless? Well, let me explain what we did, how we handle stuff internally – and then maybe it does make sense to you why we take the steps we took for upgrades like this. DevOps It seems I can’t stop talking about DevOps ;-). Well, it’s the… Continue Reading...
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2020 release wave 2 is Released!
Just a small reminder for you that yet another major release has been thrown our direction: v17 aka “Business Central 2020 Release Wave 2“. Old news, I know. But I blame the pandemic ;-). I already blogged about this upcoming release, and basically the list is quite the same.In fact, besides the official Microsoft Docs documentation, Natalie Karolak shared a smart way to filter for… Continue Reading waldo’s...
You wonder how? The answer is “DevOps”!
You must have seen this blog post from Microsoft: Maintain AppSource apps and per-tenant extensions in Dynamics 365 Business Central (online) And/or this blog of AJ: Business Central App maintenance policy tightened And/or this post from James: SaaS enables progress, why block it? If you didn’t, please do. Because as a Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central partner, your job… Continue Reading waldo’s Article on...
Use Azure KeyVault in AzureDevops for sharing licensing and other secrets
You are probably aware on how “secrets” work in AzureDevops. In a way, it’s simple: you can create variables, and store the value of the variable as a secret or not, simply by tapping the “lock” when creating a variable. To share variables over multiple repos, you can create a variable group, and use that variable group in multiple pipelines. Quite Easy! But … Thing is –… Continue Reading...
Using Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central Artifacts to get to the source code of the default apps
A question I get a lot – especially from people that come from C/AL, and only take their first steps into AL – is: How do I get to Microsoft’s source code of the BaseApp (and other)? Well, there are multiple ways, really. You can download symbols, and unpack the symbols. You can download the DVD and get to the code on the DVD, or… You can simply download the artifacts And with… Continue Reading waldo’s...
Using DevOps Agent for prepping your Docker Images
I have yet another option for you that might be interesting for you to handle the artifacts that Microsoft (Freddy) is providing in stead of actual Docker Images on a Docker Registry. What changed? Well, this shouldn’t be new to you anymore. You must have read the numerous blogposts from Freddy announcing a new way of working with Docker. No? You can find everything on his blog. Let… Continue Reading waldo’s Article...
New Upcoming Conference: DynamicsCon
I just wanted to raise some attention to a new Conference in town: DynamicsCon. Quite interesting, because it’s perfectly aligned with the current world situation regarding COVID-19 issues: it’s a virtual event .. and it’s free! I’m not saying I prefer virtual events. I don’t. But given the circumstances, I guess it makes sense – and some advantages as well: you will be able to see… Continue...
Installing a DevOps Agent (with Docker) with the most chance of success
You might have read my previous blog on DevOps build agents. Since then, I’ve been quite busy with DevOps – and especially with ALOps. And I had to conclude that one big bottleneck keeps being the same: a decent (stable) installation of a DevOps Build server that supports Docker with the images from Microsoft. Or in many cases: a decent build agent that supports Docker – not even having to… Continue Reading...
Microsoft Dynamics 365: 2020 release wave 2 plan
That’s right. It’s time again for the next round of features that Microsoft is planning for the next major release. It’s weird this time, lacking most info from conferences .. the kind of “silent” release of Wave 1 .. it’s almost like flying blind. Although, there is a crapload of information online. And of course, don’t forget Microsoft’s Virtual Conference from June 3rd. Since...
Deploying from DevOps the right way (Part 2): Deploying to OnPrem Business Central environments with the automation API
You might have read my previous blogpost on how to enable the “external deployment” in an OnPrem Business Central environment. Well, that post deserved an “extension” as I didn’t provide examples on how to deploy with PowerShell – which you would be able to do within Azure DevOps. Scenario The scenario is still the same: you have all these OnPrem customers, where you would like to… Continue...
Deploying from DevOps the right way: enabling External Deployment in OnPrem Business Central environments
It seems that lately, I’m only able to blog about something when I have a tool to share.. . That needs to change .. :-/. But not today. Today, I’m going to share yet another tool that we at the ALOps-team have been working on to serve many of our customers. And we decided to share it with the community. The tool is free, it will stay free … but, there is a … Disclaimer The… Continue Reading waldo’s Article on...
Getting not-out-of-the-box information with the out-of-the-box web client
A few days ago, I saw this tweet: Do you need to see current the database size for a company broken down into table sizes? In #MSDyn365BC 2020 release wave 1, you can do that in the new Table Information page. See more: https://t.co/ShGVYnec2g pic.twitter.com/DGHlr5WlME— Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central (@MSDYN365BC) May 23, 2020 And that reminded me about a question I had a few… Continue Reading waldo’s...
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central Virtual Event, June 3rd, 2020
It was quite expected, I guess. After alle the cancellations of Business Central conferences, like NAVTechDays, Directions, Days of Knowledge, .. , Microsoft announced today that they will host a first “Virtual Conference” called “Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central Virtual Event” and it will be held on June 3rd, 2020. Be the first to see what’s new in Microsoft Dynamics 365… Continue Reading...
Multi Root Workspaces in VSCode for AL Development – Episode 2
Remember my blog post on “Multi-root workspaces in VSCode for AL Development“? If not – it might be interesting to read first, because this is in fact an “extension” (get it?) on it .. so you might say this blogpost “depends” on that one ;-). I concluded the post with some scripts – and that’s the part I’d like to extend a bit – because I needed more functionality...
Dependency Analysis Tool (ALDependencyAnalysis)
Remember this post? Probably not. Nearly a year ago at Directions US, I showed some “how did I do stuff” during a number of sessions. And it ended with a lot of feedback, which came down to: “can I have it”? So, that’s where I wrote a post “I have work to do” ;-). The “DevOps”-part of the work is done: ALOps is available and well used :-). But the second...
How to REALLY rename all AL-files of your Business Central app..
You remember this post? I tried to warn you that when v16 comes out, there will be a new code rule that will check your filenames – and you’ll have to (if you don’t disable it) comply with the file name convention of Microsoft. If you don’t automate your file naming, then you’re in for some .. uhm .. challenges. I just made sure that the automation of the filenames complied with...
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2020 Wave 1 is (almost) released!
Indeed – I didn’t see any official statement yet – but it’s obvious, v16 is the current latest MS release .. and if you don’t believe me – just check Docker (the latest “current” release is already v16 – docker image “mcr.microsoft.com/businesscentral/onprem”)… I’m not going to bore you with what is already online – I will simply point you to the...
New Command in My CRS AL Language Extension: Search Object Names
Recently, I came across this post by Jack Mallender. An interesting idea on how to efficiently find AL Objects among your files. It basically comes down to using regex in combination with the global search functionality in VSCode, like (yep, I’m stealing this from Jack’s post – sorry, Jack ;-)): It immediately convinced me that this would be very useful for everyone, so I was thinking… Continue Reading...
DevOps Build Agents for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central
Not too long ago, I did a webinar for ALOps. The idea of these webinars is simple: how can you get started with DevOps for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central. And I’m not going to lie: I will focus on doing that with ALOps. But that’s not the only focus of these videos – I will touch lots of stuff that has nothing to do with ALOps, but more like strategies, simple “how to’s” and so…...
Searching the unsearchable
You probably know about the twitter hashtag “bcalhelp” .. A way for you to ask help on twitter about anything AL for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central. Well – yesterday, it made me smile … there was someone that was trying to find something on Vjeko’s blog. Pretty clever to use the bcalhelp for it :-), because he immediately got response. Here is the twitter thread (if you can… Continue...
Multi-root Workspaces in VSCode for AL Development
You might have figured – I’m a VSCode fanboy. One of many. You might remember the session I did on NAVTechDays 2017 (Rock ‘n Roll with VSCode), where I dove quite a bit into the possibilities this great tool comes with. But I didn’t talk about the concept of “Multi-root Workspaces”: an ability of VSCode for you to work on multiple “projects” at the same time, in one...
NAV TechDays 2019 – Development Methodologies for the future – The Menu
NAVTechDays is already over for a while .. and yes, I already blogged about it. But I recently had to refer to a part of my session on “Development Methodologies”, and I noticed that someone named “Marcus Nordlund” actually put quite some time to completely “menutize” the video in the comment section of the video :-). Awesome effort that I needed to share! Thanks, Marcus! Here it…...
Microsoft Dynamics 365: 2020 release wave 1 plan
As you probably already picked up in the media – Microsoft has released its plans for Wave 1 release (in April) for this year. You can find all the information here: https://aka.ms/Dynamics365ReleasePlan. The document contains all the information on all we want to know regarding “what’s next” for all related applications, like Marketing, Customer Service, Field Service, …. and also our…...
AppSourceCop & mandatoryAffixes
I recently blogged about how to rename files with my VSCode Extension to comply with the new filename conventions from Microsoft. Somewhat related to that, we need to talk about … Pre- or Suffixing It’s been known for a while: pre-or suffixing is necessary to “live in the cloud”. It prevents duplicate names in various places: duplicate table names, duplicate field names .. things… Continue...