dynamics 365 Business Central

Business Central Virtual Event – 2020 Wave 1

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A couple days ago, we had an opportunity to participate first Business Central Virtual Event. This was good opportunity to see what is new in Business Central and the team during these times when we don’t have in person events (Directions Asia and Directions US are postponed to the end of this year).

With all existing and new features Business Central confirms that this solution is an important member of Dynamics 365 and Microsoft family, available for easy using and integration and collaboration with other systems through Azure cloud.

It is presented to us a new Business Central GM – Mike Morton, an experienced Microsoft leader, who introduce himself to the community as well as his first plans for Business Central. As important results he mentioned that now Business Central on cloud has 6000+ customers with 250+% YoY growth.

During this event we had a great opportunity to see some new features as well as to hear what is planned for the future releases. One of these great features planned in the next release is SmartList Designer – a great reporting tool inspired with GP tool and created in PowerApps. Further we could hear about new integration with teams as one of the most important integrations with other Microsoft products.

I don’t want to write about all features in this new release (2020 Wave 1), as you can find all details here. I just want to emphasize a few of these features. Finally, we have all languages available for using… and not only Microsoft official localizations, but also partner translations for much more countries. And one of my favorite features – integration with CDS; really great improvement which will have a huge impact on future implementation; I want to write independent blog post about this feature and this is a reason I don’t write here more. There is a lot of UI improvements (Collection of pages with already configured filters per pages, now you can bookmark reports as well, pages with two parallel lines, you can collapse or expand your lines on the page e.g. in CoA, personalization is really improved…). Finally, we can purchase resources… something partners developed in the past, but now available by default. Many great development improvements as well as on the server/database side (e.g. database read-only replica for reports, API pages, and query objects).

You still can find active session for this virtual event with 15 recorded presentations.

Why Attend BCUG/NAVUG Summit 2019 in Orlando

atotovic Business Central, Conference, Dynamics 365, Microsoft Dynamics NAV , , , , , , , , , , , ,

In a month, BCUG/NAVUG Summit in Orlando will start. There will be dozens of amazing lectures and if you are NAV or Business Central user, this event is probably something you must attend, especially if you want to continue with improving your knowledge.

I like to come back to this event every year as this is probably only one opportunity where you can get directly feedback from thousands of Dynamics users.

This time, I would try to explain why you should attend this amazing event using video message and I hope you will like it 🙂

My Sessions during Fall 2019 Conference Season

atotovic Business Central, Conference, Dynamics 365, Power Platform , , , , , , , , , , , ,

This fall I’ll be active and attend to four conferences as lecturer. If you want to see some of my lectures or to meet me, register for some of these events:

BCEE People, Prague – Business Central Roadmap in CEE countries

Directions EMEA, Vienna – Demystifying Posting Groups in Business Central (for partners)

BCUG Summit NA, Orlando – Demystifying Posting Groups in Business Central (for users)

NAV TechDays, Antwerp – Business Central with Power Platform (together with Renato Fajdiga, MVP)

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.

eXtreme 365 in Amsterdam

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

eXtreme 365 conference is one of very important partner oriented conferences. After eXtreme 365 in Austin Texas in December last year, now it is a time for European eXtreme 365, this time in Amsterdam. If you still didn’t register, and if you are available in period March 25-27, you can do it here.

For sure, you can find a lot of interesting sessions there. But I want to announce my sessions. If you are newbie in Dynamics 365 Business Central, it will be helpful to attend the whole-day workshop: What is Business Central? A hand on Experience. It will be held the second day on conference. But first day will be reserved for my session What can you Expect in the April ’19 Business Central Release.

See you in a few days in Amsterdam.

All sessions from NAV TechDays 2018

atotovic Business Central, Conference, Microsoft Dynamics NAV , , , , ,

NAV TechDays 2018 has just finished a few days ago and I can say this was the best NAV TechDays ever. I don’t know what name will be the next year NAV or BC TechDays (or something different), but I’ll be there for sure and I’m promising I’ll prepare session for next year. Now, all sessions are already published and I want to have all of them on the one place. There are all of them:

Opening Keynote

What’s new in Developing for Business Central

Practical approaches for upgrading your NAV database and moving to extensions

Performance: Business Central reloaded for the Cloud

Crazy mix of integrations: Dynamics 365 Business Central and Azure services

Add some magic to Business Central with Machine Learning

Business Central: The new face of the client

Evolution of a titan: a look at the development of NAV from an MVP angle

Designing for extensibility: Learn straight from the Application Architects

Under the hood of Business Central service

The future for developers and consultants

Real life scenarios and best practices for using NAV on Docker

CI/CD for Business Central

Dynamics 365 Business Central Licensing

atotovic Dynamics 365, Microsoft Dynamics NAV , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

As we already had insight in Dynamics 365 Business Central and this solution will be available in only three days, it is a moment to get more information about licensing. In this post I’ll show only the basic important topics regarding licensing.

As we already know, there are three licensing types Premium, Essential and Team Members. Premium and Essential will provide full access to solution, but not to the same level of features. Essential has most of the future, but not Manufacturing and Service Management (this is included in Premium package). And very important thing is that we cannot use a mix of these two user types. You must choose what level of features you need and all full users must use the same license type.

D365BC licenses.PNG

As a Team Member, you can do the following:

  • Read anything within Dynamics 365 Business Central
  • Update existing data and entries in Dynamics 365 Business Central – existing data are records like customer, vendor or item records which are already created. Entries means entries on which it is specifically allowed from an accounting perspective to update specific information. (e.g. due date on customer ledger entries)
  • Approve or reject tasks in all workflows assigned to a user
  • Create, edit, delete a quote
  • Create, edit, delete personal information
  • Enter a time sheet for Jobs
  • Use PowerApps for Dynamics 365

And more, it is important to know that the minimum number of full users is 1 and w don’t have a maximum number of users (you can register number of users you need). But keep in mind, we are talking about named users, not concurrent.

And Dynamics 365 Business Central Essential, Dynamics 365 Business Central Premium and Dynamics 365 Business Central Team Members also includes the PowerApps for Dynamics 365 Applications license.

Dynamics 365 Business Central users are not provided with any standalone or general-purpose Power BI license or use rights, but this subscription includes an option to embed Power BI content as a product feature but require users to subscribe to Power BI separately to configure access to this content.

And with a question what we have more included, this is important table:

D365BC environment

Customers who wish to expand beyond the default subscription capacity included in Dynamics 365 Business Central will need to have a separate Azure subscription.

But on the end as very important: please do not use this article as license manual. If you need more details for licensing of real or potential customers, please use an official Dynamics 365 Business central Licensing Guide.

Personalization vs Design in D365 Business Central

atotovic Dynamics 365, Microsoft Dynamics NAV , , , , , , , , ,

I’ve just finished with my presentation on eXtreme 365 about new in Dynamics 365 Business Central and I want to continue my texts about new solution, because I’ve already wrote about some basic expressions.

With Dynamics 365 Business Central we’ve got some new features for customizations and “customizations”. Previously, you could use Design mode as In-App Designer to make some basic customizations or to download it as extension code, open in Visual Studio Code and continue with development. But now we have personalization as well and I want just to show what is basic difference.

When you run standard environment, you can see only ‘Personalize’ in settings.

Capture1.PNG

But if you run sandbox environment, you can see both ‘Personalize’ and ‘Design’ options in settings.

Capture2

If you choose ‘Personalize’ options, you will get something similar as the following picture:

Capture3.PNG

You will see red frame and that means you can personalize your page or pages. You can move or hide some parts. But you can also add new fields (existing fields from table), or set new place for Freeze Pane. What is else new? If you run list page, you can stretch your columns. You can do it in all pages where you want and when you finish and click on Done, system will collect all your personalization and you can continue to use them.

But if you run ‘Design’, you will get the similar screen, but this time with purple frames.

Capture4.PNG

Generally, you can do more or less the similar things with Design feature as with Personalize. But this time when you finish everything you planned you will create Extension. When you finish everything and click on Stop Design, you need to fill Extension Name and Publisher and save it. And if you plan to add some bigger changes, you can choose do mark Download Code field and then you will download AL code which can be opened with VS Code and add more seriously customization.

Capture5.PNG

Anyway, when you use Design mode, everything you done will be showed and installed extension:

Capture6

And on the end I would like to add some conclusion. These conclusions are based on advice from some my friends and readers and I think they are in right, because it will be more clear.

Personalization is, as stated, a personal affair. Any changes I make are applicable only to me. This is of course a highly valuable feature in production environments (what you called “standard environment”) to have my workspace optimized just right for how I work.

Designing, on the other hand, applies to all users on that environment. It is intended for Developers or power users to create lightweight extensions that will ultimately be used by all in the organization. The extension produced by the Designer could be edited and enriched further in Visual Studio code where the possibilities are endless (through AL code). Eventually, that extension could be submitted to AppSource for distribution at scale, or it could be imported into a customer’s production environment to customize D365 Business Central.
Since Designing is a technical and mostly dev-focused activity, we don’t enable it in production environments. That is also why Designing gives you a few more features, such as being able to preview your creation as it would appear on a tablet or phone.

Dynamics 365 Business Central Roadmap

atotovic Dynamics 365, Microsoft Dynamics NAV , , , , , , ,

In my previous text, I’ve mentioned I’ll continue with first impressions about Dynamics 365 Business Central. But I’ll continue this text the next week, when I finish my presentation with this topic at eXtreme 365 in Dubrovnik.

This time, I’ve just wanted to show more details about Dynamics 365 Business Central roadmap. When we compare this roadmap, there is just a small difference in comparison with the last one shown on Directions NA and EMEA the last year (OK, except new name).

D365BC roadmap.PNGIn the previous roadmap, we had Dynamics NAV 2018R2 planed for this spring, but now we can see it will not be published with its name. We can see that we will get Dynamics NAV 2018 updates (personally, I think it is much better).

And as we could hear, in the future we will get small updates every month and bigger package two times per year. If you want to find more about each planned feature, you can go here.