spring release

Directions NA 2020 and what we heard

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Directions NA 2019 has just finished and I’m writing this article in a plane on my way to home. It was great opportunity to meet 925 Dynamics professionals and not only from North America. It was amazing event and I’m happy because I had opportunity to speak here. We got a lot interesting information regarding Business Central Spring Release and to listen about experience of implementations of this solution here in US.

If you were there, you know what I’m talking about. If you were not be there, you can find all that news on Microsoft official document here. I’ll only emphasize some facts we hear from Jannik and Claus on a closing session as well as they will have a big impact on a future of BC.

  • In the future, ISV scenarios will include 15 objects for Team Members
  • From July 1st, we will get device license – CSP pricelist = 40USD
  • For On-prem transition to BC, user ratio is changed to 1:3 (for each concurrent user in NAV/GP user, they will get 3 named BC users) and this time this includes limited users as well
  • On-premises partners will get more internal users licenses
  • On-premises license will include one CAL for external accountant and one CAL for a system administrator, the same as we have in a subscription

If you read only these few facts, you can understand how important it is for partners and for clients as well.

We also heard that we will get new certification exams for Business Central functional consultants in FY20 as well as better differentiation through the Cloud Business Applications Competency and/or the Small and Mid-Market Cloud Solutions competency. Also, there will be secondary transition journey for clients who want to stay on-premises and to use cloud benefits or to migrate to the cloud (stay on BREP and purchase Midterm Offer).

And on the end, Directions NA 2020 (April 19-22) will be again in Orlando in Hyatt Regency Grand Cypress and for me it has a special place in my hearth, because in this place a few years ago, I had an opportunity to speak on Direction North America for the very first time.

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Business Central – Spring & Fall ’19 Release

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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

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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.