Month: April 2019

My Sessions on Directions North America 2019

atotovic Business Central, Conference, Dynamics 365 , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Directions Asia has just finished, and we will continue with spring conference season in Dynamics. The next Directions will be in North America in Las Vegas in period May 5-8 in Red Rock Casino Resort & Spa. Registration is still available.

This year I want to show you about benefits of integration with different Dynamics 365 solutions. Why? Generally, I think we have great features in Business Central, but possibility to integrate this solution with other solutions using Azure tools or using different UI are the amazing possibilities. These options are why it is important to have Business Central in Dynamics 365 family.

Because of these reasons, you can find my sessions in agenda. From today (April 12th, the full agenda is available):

How and Why You Should Combine Dynamics 365 for Talent with D365 Business Central (May 7 2019, 8:00am, Room: Veranda B)

‘Dynamics 365 for Talent’ is a new Microsoft Dynamics HCM solution. This solution is available independently or through Unified Operations plan. Because we can use it independently, it is interesting if we can integrate this solution with Business central. You will see how to integrate Talent with Business Central and very important thing – without coding. And of course, you will see different integration options based on different user scenarios.

Using Model-Driven PowerApps with Business Central (May 5 2019, 3:15pm, Room: Red Rock A)

Although on the first sight, there is no so common things between Business Central model driven PowerApps, it can be very useful if we could use it with Business Central. Generally, model driven PowerApps is a tool for CRM development, but there are many reasons why to use it with Business Central. If you want to know why, come to this session to see why to do it and how to do it… and maybe even more. As we expect more and more CRM and ERP solutions in simultaneously work, it can be very interesting.

OK, I will not write more, but if you think these topics are interesting for you, you are welcome on my sessions and see you in Las Vegas.

And of course, my sessions are not only reason to come on Directions 😊. You will find great sessions there… you will see details about Business Central Spring release ’19 as well as amazing sessions by MVP’s and other experts.

Business Central – Spring & Fall ’19 Release

atotovic Business Central, Dynamics 365 , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

In my previous post, I’ve introduced you with the news from Directions ASIA and Business Central spring release. As I said in this previous post, there are a lot of improvements. Some of them are on this slide, and as very important improvements in performance, reliability and scalability, we can find that now we have

  • 50% faster Role Center load time
  • 40% faster in Lead to Cash scenarios
  • 2x improvement in RapidStart

Of course, there are a lot of other improvements. I’ve recently had a session about this topic in eXtreme 365, but this time I’ll not write about them, because you can find all of them in the following:

In total, there are more than 100 enhancements and some of them are extremely usable.

But what is also interesting? We got some hints what will be in Fall ’19 release. And as I mentioned yesterday, the first things – there will not be Windows Client and C/SIDE anymore; only Modern Client (web) and AL with VS Code. But in on-prem, you will get full BC code as an app and you can change this code as you used to work with that in old Development Environment. Not exactly the same, but you can do it. But even if you can do it, this is not recommendation as we heard that in one moment in the future we will continue with extensions only even on on-prem. Nobody can say when exactly, but this is a future. Because of that, start with extensions immediately.

Of course, team will continue to improve proficiency, to reduce ISV friction, enhance migration tools, to improve service fundamentals… and now we can see plans for CDS in 2020 and further.

What is not so good information (especially for countries without MS official localization) is that team announce that we can expect expanding localizations after October release, not before that ☹. But on the other side, team will invest in really cool things in this period.


And on the end, Directions NA will come in May and we will see if we have stil something new regarding all these topics.

Directions ASIA 2019 – After Keynote

atotovic Business Central, Dynamics 365 , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Directions ASIA has just started a few hour ago. On a first day keynote, we could hear a lot of interesting information. I’ll start with some numbers. As this is third Directions in Asia, number of attendees still increase every year. This year we have the following statistic:

  • Number of attendees: 453
  • Attendees from 157 companies and from 32 countries
  • Number of sessions: 70
  • Number of speakers: 55 (Microsoft, MVP’s and industry experts)

Now, what we could hear about product and market? Based on showed information, Business Central and NAV together are implemented at 223.000 customers with more than 3.3 million users in 196 countries. Impressive numbers, right? And I really hope, this solution will continue as previously and even better.

As this is announcement of Business Central Spring ’19 release, we can see what is new in this release and the full roadmap for this solution. During keynote, we could see that product team is extremely proud on stability, security and performance. Of course, there is a lot of new features. In my following texts, I’ll write about all these things.

Currently, we could see new roadmap for our solution, and it looks fine:

We can see that system already got a lot of new feature, especially trying to improve user experience. And I can conclude, they really succeed with this.

But if we look in more detailed roadmap, you will find two very important facts. This release will be the last one with Windows Client and with C/SIDE and C/AL.

From October ’19 release, we will have only Modern Client (web client) and VS Code + AL in development side. If you used only BC on a cloud, you will not recognize some difference, but if you used on-prem solution, then it is the right moment to migrate to web client asap. And in development, please start with extensions immediately. But to be honest, in on-prem solution you will still be in situation to change a code, but this time in VS Code using completely BC system as an App. But it will still be much better if you start to move all your customization to extensions.

Of course, there are some other news, but I cannot put everything in one blog post, but you can expect all this news soon.