Introduction In this blog, I will demonstrate how to copy data between different companies using configuration worksheet. Previously we could only use Configuration packages or copy the company to copy data between companies. By using the Configuration worksheet users can copy data from specific tables in companies to their respective table in the current company. Pre-requisite Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central (On-premise/SaaS) Steps Globally search for “Configuration Worksheet” and click on the related link. Configuration Worksheet page opens up. Fill in the table you want to copy. Then click the ‘Copy Data from Company’ button on the action bar as shown in the below screenshot. Also, to use this function the ‘copy data from’ company table must have records and the ‘copy data to’ company table must have no records. A Pop- up page appears allowing the user to select the company from which data will be copied. The no. of records will be shown of the selected table. If the table selected has no records then the line won’t appear. If there are no issues, click on ‘Copy data’ action and a confirmation message will pop up before proceeding. A confirmation message pops up mentioning the data has been copied successfully. Other Actions Get Tables: Click on ‘Prepare’ on the action bar, there you will find the ‘Get Tables’ button. This lets the user add tables by using filters as shown in the below screenshot. Get related tables: User can find another button by clicking ‘Prepare’ and in that ‘Get related Tables’. This function adds all Vendor-related tables and fields anchored on other tables. Please note: Table relation with filtered view and conditional table relations are not considered here. Delete Duplicate lines: Users will find this button under the ‘Prepare’ action. This function deletes duplicated lines as shown in the below screenshot. The vendor line was repeated, by using this function it deleted duplicate lines. Conclusion: In this blog, we learned about copying data from multiple companies into the current company by using a configuration worksheet. Hope this helps!

Introduction: Business Central 2023 wave 1 (BC22) new features: AL Explorer and AL Home in Visual Studio Code AL extension Steps : 1. Download and install the next major version of the AL Language extension. (v11). 2. Below is the download link of the AL Language below to experience the new features of the development. Click on this link Link:  ALLanguage v11.0.759316. Extract that folder and we can see there is a VSIX extension file. 3. Uninstall your previous AL language extension from the visual code marketplace. 4: Go to visual studio code extension marketplace, then click on 3 dots -> click on-> Install from VSIX. 5 : Select vsix extension file, and click on Install. Here, we have successfully installed the AL language extension. 6. First of all, when we open the VS Code, we will see the AL Home below. 7. Another shortcut key for this AL Explorer:     AL: Explorer: Ctrl + Shift + F12 Below is the AL: Explorer page. 8. We can View, search, and filter objects: a. Group By: b. Module c. Go to Source Code For a selected object, we can quickly jump to source code, whether to develop or read. d. Bookmark: We can bookmark objects. Below is the Bookmark object. e. API: AL Explorer also allows an overview of all APIs. f. Events: AL Explorer also allows an overview of all Events. g. Extensible Enums: AL Explorer also allows an overview of all Extensible enums. Thank you, I hope this helps!

Introduction Hi, Readers. Today I would like to talk about How to create a Business Central free trial tenant. References https://www.microsoft.com/en-in/microsoft-365/enterprise/office-365-e3?activetab=pivot:overviewtab Steps: Step 1: Search Office 365 E3 on Google or click on the below link. https://www.microsoft.com/en-in/microsoft-365/enterprise/office-365-e3?activetab=pivot:overviewtab Click on the Free trial Fill in personal details which are required Step 2: In the next screen, enter the domain you want example bclearning.onmicrosoft.com Set a password and click on Next Step 3: Enter Any Registration no. (Ex. Any Unique no.) You have successfully created an Office 365 account. Ensure that you are logged in with this account. Step 4: Now you need to open this link in your browser https://businesscentral.dynamics.com/ Click on Continue. Step 5: You can create multiple users here. If you don’t want it, just select the skip option. Here is your Business Central free trial tenant. Now you can explore Business Central. Hope this help. Thanks for reading.

Introduction LS Central allows us to create a Sales Order or Sales Quote directly from POS. I will be demonstrating the same below in this blog. Pre-requisites LS Central v16+ Business Central OnPrem/OnCloud References Suspend Type, Sales Type (lsretail.com) Configuration Search for “Sales Type” in Business Central  Create a new record titled “SALES ORDER”  in it. Make sure to set the Suspend Type to Sales Order/Sales Quote as required. I am setting it to Sales Order for this example.  Log In to your POS with a POS Super User account and Right click on a button and go to button properties, I’m using the default “SUSPEND” button for example here.  Set the command to “SUSPEND” and the parameter to the “Sales Order” record you created a few moments ago.  Once this is done, create a new Transaction with a Customer and then click on the button. In the confirmation box, click on Yes.  If you check in Business Central now, you can see that a new Sales Order has been created.  You can also see the same from POS itself if you click on the “Sales Order” button that we created just now.  Conclusion: Thus we saw how to create a Sales Order/Sales Quote directly from POS. Happy Coding!

Introduction OData Bound Actions allows us to perform logic in Business Central by hitting specific end points. We can also pass in parameters and get results in response. It’s very similar to using Azure Functions but is natively built into Business Central at no extra cost! In this example, we’ll be returns the Base64 version of an Image of a Customer, we will also see how to get the Image for any other customer as well. Pre-requisites Business Central OnCloud/OnPrem References WebServiceActionContext Data Type – Business Central | Microsoft Docs Creating and Interacting with an OData V4 Bound Action – Business Central | Microsoft Docs Configuration OData Bound Actions are written on Pages or API – Pages that you are declaring as Web Services. In this example below, I’ve created a simple Customer Page with a few fields and kept the OData key field as the “No.” field. I’ve also defined this as a Web Service in Business Central.  To create a OData Bound Action, we create a Global Procedure with the Service Enabled decorator. In this procedure, we have to create a WebServiceActionContext variable and set the “ObjectType”, “ObjectID” and Keys that we are using for this Web Service, which is “No.” in this case, after our processing is done we also need to set the “Result Code” for this request.  In the above piece of code, I’ve written simple logic which converts the content of a Media Data Type (Image field) to Base64 Text and returns it. In Post-Man if you check of the metadata, you’ll be able to see this action defined in the metadata.  Now, it’s time to test out OData Bound Action! To call the OData Bound Action, we need to be working with a single record. So we specify the “No.” field to identify a single record.  Now, we append our procedure name as “NAV.[Procedure Name]” and make a POST request.  If we put this Base64 through a Base64 to File Converter, we can see that the original data is recovered.  Now, we create a new procedure, which will take the System ID as a parameter and return the Image data for that Customer Record.    If you want to pass the parameters to the OData Bound Actions, you have to do it as the Body of the Request.  Conclusion: P.S. I’ve tried but it seems polymorphism doesn’t work with this. I hope this was insightful and a quick start on how to write OData Bound Actions. Happy coding!

Introduction With SMTP Mail being deprecated, Business Central now provides us with a new and enhanced way for writing custom logic to send emails. To use this new functionality you have to first configure Email Accounts in Business Central, which you can find here. Pre-requisites Business Central onCloud References Developing with the new enhanced email feature | Dan Kinsella Configuration The new method uses the Email Message (ID: 8904) and Email (ID: 8901) Codeunits. I’ve added multiple actions below and I’ll be describing what the expected behaviour is. This is the simple piece of code which sends an email with the specified Recipients, CCs and BCCs.We can specify multiple recipients and dynamically as the lists are not bound by size. We can also call a simpler version of this method, where we don’t need to specify the CC and BCC. Changing the “OpenInEditor” procedure of “Email” codeunit causes a page to be opened up where you can edit the message before you send it. You can also add attachments or you can save the message draft. Changing the “OpenInEditorModally” procedure of “Email” codeunit causes a page to be opened up (as “RunModal”) where you can edit the message before you send it. You can also add attachments or you can save the message draft. “SaveAsDraft” procedure saves the email as a draft and you can view it in the “Email Outbox” where you can make any changes if necessary and send it directly from there. You can also add attachments to the email directly from code. Conclusion Thus we saw how we can send emails in Business Central v20.

Introduction LS Central has its own unique way of preventing Items from being sold which is different from the standard “Blocked” option field we get on the Item Card. It also comes with detailed and refined permissions which can fit most business needs. All of this is done using another related table known as “Item Status.” Pre-requisites: Business Central OnCloud/OnPrem LS Central v16 References: Item Status (lsretail.com) How to Block Items From Sale at the POS (navisiontech.com) Configuration Open the Item Card for the Item you want to block.  Open the “Item Status” for that Item.  Click on the “Status Code” and Click on “Select from full list.”  Create a new record with code “BLOCKED” and enable all the fields. Here, you can see all the detailed controls available.  Conclusion: Thus, we saw how we can Block Items on POS in LS Central and other finer controls available at our disposal in LS Central.

Introduction Have you ever faced the error: “Report ___ does not have a layout of type None.” Here’s how you can resolve it. Pre-requisites Business Central OnCloud/OnPrem References https://community.dynamics.com/business/b/think-about-it/posts/how-do-i-fix-error-report-x-does-not-have-a-layout-of-type-none Configuration With the earlier versions of Business Central, you were allowed to run a report without specifying a layout, even if it was not a processing only report. However with the recent version of Business Central it is mandatory to specify both the “DefaultLayout” and the path to the layout via the “RDLCLayout” or “WordLayout” or “ExcelLayout” properties. Once these properties are the defined the error is resolved. Furthermore you can also resolve this error by using the report rendering section which has been made available since runtime 9.0. However be sure to define the “DefaultRenderingLayout” property for the report to specify which of the layouts defined should be considered as default. Conclusion: Thus we saw how we can resolve the error: “Report ___ does not have a layout of type None.” Happy Coding!

Introduction We’ve all faced situations where we’ve had an operation take a long while which made the User wonder whether the system is stuck with something or is still processing. We can use simple dialogs which can enhance the User experience by showing User the progress of the operation. Some Business Central operations have out of the box dialogs which indicate progress like Posting documents or entries, Running reports with large data sets. Pre-requisites Business Central OnCloud/OnPrem References Dialog Data Type – Business Central | Microsoft Docs Dialog.Open(Text [, var Any,…]) Method – Business Central | Microsoft Docs Configuration While using the Dialog for creating windows, there are 3 procedures that we are going to be using. Open – It creates the window which we will be displaying the messages in. Update – It updates the content of the window based on the values that we pass in it. Close – It closes the window. We can create a simple Progress Window using the below piece of code. And this is the result for it. Please note that because there were two # in the Label, system has broken them into two separate lines. To avoid creating multiple lines within a single dialog box, we can use the StrSubstNo procedure which compresses the number of updates that we call to 1. We can now see that the content is visible in a single line. In Business Central 14 or previous versions of Business Central (which used windows client) it was possible to show the progress indicator in percentages using native APIs, however this functionality is not supported in Web Client. However we can still simulate it using text and creating our own basic procedure which converts the values to a String which will be used to indicate the progress. Conclusion: Thus we saw how we can use Dialogs to enhance User Experience and allow Users to visualize the processing of some long running task.

Inventory periods are used to keep track of when inventory adjusting entries are posted. Unless inventory periods are closed on a monthly basis, adjusting entries will post in the same period as the original transaction. Inventory adjustments will not be posted in that period if you create and close inventory periods. If the initial transaction was posted during a closed inventory period, the adjustments’ value is posted on the first day of the first open inventory period. This ensures that once the financial statements have been printed for a month, the G/L value of inventories, costs, and cost of goods sold do not change. CREATING INVENTORY PERIOD Many companies manage inventory the same time they manage accounting Period. Steps to access inventory period: Go to ‘Accounting Period’ Click on ‘Process’, there you find ‘inventory period’  OR You can simply Go to ‘Inventory Period’ from Global Search. STEPS TO CREATE AN INVENTORY PERIOD. Click On the search icon and enter Inventory Period, select relevant link.  Create a new line In the Ending Date Field, enter the last date in the inventory period that you want to define. When the period is closed, you will not be able to post inventory changes before this date. Enter a descriptive name in the Name field. CLOSING INVENTORY PERIOD. The Closed parameter specifies whether the inventory period is closed to changes in inventory value. This field is not editable. You can close any inventory period if the following conditions are met In that time period, there are no open outbound item ledger entries, showing negative inventory. The Adjust Cost – Item Entries batch job was used to adjust the cost of all goods. This means that any outbound transaction quantities must be applied to existing inventory numbers, such as those from sales orders, outbound transfers, sales invoices, buy returns, or purchase credit notes. TO CLOSE AN INVENTORY PERIOD Before closing an inventory period, choose the Adjust Cost – Item Entries action to ensure that all cost adjustments are posted.Run the Close Inventory Period – Test report to determine if there are any open outbound item entries within the inventory period or any items whose cost has not yet been adjusted. Choose the Close Inventory Period – Test action.Run the Post Inventory Cost to G/L batch job to ensure that all costs are posted to the general ledger. Choose the Post Inventory to G/L action. On the Inventory Periods page, select the inventory period you want to close. Choose the Close Period action. After the inventory period has been closed, you cannot post inventory changes before the ending date. The cost of all items must be adjusted with the Adjust Cost – Item Entries batch job before you close the inventory period. Choose the Yes button to confirm that you want to close the period, or choose No to cancel the closing. The inventory period is closed and a confirmation message is displayed when it is finished. REOPEN INVENTORY PERIOD It is not possible to delete an inventory period once it has been closed. You can, however, reopen it if you want to allow posting before the inventory period’s expiration date. When you reopen a period, it also reopens other inventory periods with ending dates later than the reopened period. TO REOPEN AN INVENTORY PERIOD Choose the icon, enter Inventory Periods, and then choose the related link. Select the inventory period you want to reopen. Choose the Reopen Period action. Confirm that you want to reopen the period. All inventory periods with ending dates later than the period you selected are reopened. Thank you for reading. Hope this helped. 🙂