Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central (BC) General Presentation

1. RobertoStefanetti,
MVP BusinessSolutions– NAV &BC
@robstefane

2. AGENDA

3. NAV to BC TIMELINE
https://robertostefanettinavblog.com/2015/06/14/from-navision-to-microsoft-the-history-of-dynamics-nav-navision/
https://robertostefanettinavblog.com/2018/03/13/microsoft-dynamics-365-business-central/

4. NAVBC Timeline – Best Features in Time
Business
Central

5. Business Central Roadmap
https://dynamics.microsoft.com/it-it/business-central/overview/

6. Business Central Docs Portal
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/#pivot=main&panel=getstarted
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/#pivot=main&panel=apps

7. Dynamics 365 Business Central (BC)

8. Dynamics 365 Business Central - About
Dynamics 365 BC OnCloud is based on
the Microsoft NAV platform and several
other Microsoft services.
With Dynamics 365 BE Microsoft reinvents business productivity. 365 BC
Windows iOS Android
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/business-
central/index

9. Dynamics 365 Business Central - About
here

10. Dynamics 365 Business Central - About

11. Dynamics 365 Business Central - About

12. Dynamics 365 Business Central - About

13. Dynamics 365 Business Central - About

14. Dynamics 365 Business Central – Offering
Dynamics 365 Business Central will present the full functionality of
Dynamics NAV under two different offerings:
Essential
Financial Management
Supply Chain
CRM
Human Resources
Project Management
Premium
Service Management
Manufacturing
https://community.dynamics.com/nav/b/dynamicsnavessentials/archive/2018/03/17/dynamics-365-business-
central-roadmap

15. Dynamics 365 Business Central – Features
Features
• New user interface
• Financial management
• Customer relationship management
• Supply chain management
• Human resources
• Project management
• Service order management
• Manufacturing
Details here:
https://community.dynamics.com/business/b/financials/archive/2018/0
3/13/test

16. Dynamics 365 Business Central – BEST TOPICS
NAV will be available in the cloud (SaaS)  BusinessCentral”s”
On Premise is there to stay… for a long time ??
One Codebase (two pillars, BC On Premise, BC OnCloud)
Extension V2 will work on Dynamics NAV 2018 and BUSINESS
CENTRAL
You will be able to white label your product, but you don’t have to..
Microsoft is working on the prices, there is no monetization in AppSource
– but it will come (not.. Far away..)
Microsoft Dynamics NAV consumes an insane amount of Azure stuff..
(Azure, Dockers, SQL Azure tuning, Development, Cognitive services….)

17. Dynamics 365 BC – Connected Data

18. Dynamics 365 Business Central – Apps

19. Dynamics 365 Business Central – “face”

20. Dynamics 365 BC – Azure Cloud SaaS
On-premises is more secure
Data is used for things like advertising
It’s not compliant with industry regulations
Control of data in the cloud is lost
Built to provide a level of security that exceeds most customers’
on-premises infrastructure and scale.
The first to comply with ISO/IEC 27018, which prohibits the
use of personal data for advertising and marketing.
Compliant with HIPAA, FISMA and many other industry-
specific and government regulations.
Designed to give you complete control of your data.
You own it; Microsoft manages it for you.
COMMON MYTHS
ABOUT THE CLOUD
THE MICROSOFT CLOUD IS…

21. BUSINESS CENTRAL “KEYWORDS”

22. BUSINESS CENTRAL THOUGHT
TECHNOLOGY:
CLOUD FIRST
WEB CLIENT ONLY (prospects ask for this!)
AZURE PLATFORM
OFFICE365+ALL MICROSOFT SOLUTIONS INTEGRATIONS
LOCALIZATIONS: ONLY WITH EXTENSIONS..IN FUTURE
UPGRADE: AUTOMATIC UPGRADE (STAY UPDATED!)
VS CODE : KILLING C/SIDE …VS CODE ONLY
MARKETPLACE: A LOT OF APPS (TRY, REVIEW & BUY)
Only Extensions

23. Extensions – “Building” Solutions
Extensions are the way to build for Software as a Service (SaaS)
 Allow you to sell your product in Microsoft AppSource
 Takes advantage of our upgrade investments
(Automatic Upgrade - standard platform !)
 Offer additional protection of your IP compared to the very “open
source” nature of classic NAV
 Platform stability
 Reduced time to deployment

24. Why Extensions ?
To Customize.... In next future.. all
 Page & Page Extensions
 Table & Table Extensions
 Codeunits & TBD
 Profiles
 Web services
 Report layouts
 Tenant specific web services
 Permissions
 Table data
 New safe methods for .NET
 Query Object
 Menusuite
 .NET Interop
 Client Add-ins
 Files
 Local resources

25. Extensions: Where are my Objects (APPS) ?

26. Extensions v2.0 – SaaSification

27. Extensions v2.0 – SaaSification

28. Dynamics 365 BC – ECOSYSTEM

29. Dynamics 365 BC – Power Apps

30. Dynamics 365 BC – Common Data Model

31. Dynamics 365 BC – DEVELOPING FOR CLOUD

32. Dynamics 365 BC – New Philosophy
The right UX for the right user
Underneath everything is an extension
“Visual for Business Consultant
Code for the developer”
But why C/AL still?

33. Dynamics 365 BC – New Philosophy “API”
Application as an API
 Shipped in product
 Microsoft Application (W1, US, CA, UK, etc)
 Code your own objects
Continuing the application as an API. Not all internal methods &
resources support security and isolation.
Will show up as an error in the editor.
 .NET Interop
 Attributes
 Methods
 Properties
 System Tables
 AL System Methods
Controlled in the app.json file. Enforced by server.
Legal values: Extension, Internal

34. Dynamics 365 BC – New Philosophy ..”MISSION”
• Start to refactor code
• Remove code from modified objects where
possible
• Good: Use “Hook” pattern
• Better: Use events
• Evaluate architecture of solution
• How much code is reused between customers?
• Can your solution be broken into multiple
extensions?
• Start to build code into extensions where possible

35. Dynamics 365 BC – “ALL API” INTEGRATIONS

36. BC – OFFICE NATIVE INTEGRATIONS

37. BC – PDF IN BROWSER

38. BC – EXTENSIONS BUTTONS

39. BC – SETUP & EXTENSIONS

40. BC – OUTLOOK 365 INTEGRATION
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics-nav/integrating%20dynamics%20nav%20and%20office
L’integrazione con Outlook 365 si fa ancora più potente: Business Central è in grado di leggere il
contenuto delle mail andando a popolare automaticamente le righe del documento che si
vuole produrre. L’utente, senza dover inserire i dati a mano, per esempio potrà creare un’offerta
per il cliente e successivamente inviare la fattura senza mai lasciare Outlook.
BC
Mail Reading &
Automations

41. BC – CREATE CONTACT INTERACTIONS

42. BC – CUSTOMER MANAGER

43. BC – CREATE NEW QUOTE

44. BC – CREATE NEW QUOTE

45. BC – EXCEL REPORTS
New Excel integration, with preconfigured Excel reports. The Business
Manager and Accounting Role Center has a new option in the ribbon for
Excel Reports.
Users may select from a dropdown menu of preconfigured reports (see
graphic) that is ready to print from Excel. Among those reports are such
broadly useful ones as Balance Sheet, Cash Flow Statement and Trial
Balance.

46. BC – EXCEL REPORT TEMPLATES

47. BC – POWER BI REPORTING

48. BC – POWER BI REPORTING

49. BC – WEB CLIENT PERSONALIZATION

50. BC – WEB CLIENT PERSONALIZATION
WEB CLIENT - USER PERSONALIZATION

51. BC – RUN TIME DESIGNER – JAVAS.
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics-nav/developer/devenv-
inclient-designer

52. BC – WEB CLIENT PERSONALIZATION
RUN-TIME DESIGNOR - JAVASCRIPT

53. BC – WEB CLIENT PERSONALIZATION
FINISH DESIGN & SAVE “.APP”

54. BC – NEW DEVELOPMENT ENVIRONMENT

55. BC – .NET REPLACEMENT

56. BC – OData V4 – Single Call !
Business Central runs OData web services based on OData
V4, OData Relational Query Support provides the ability to
include related entities inline within a single OData V4
response..
Great feature… ALL data in a single call !

57. BC Instant Upgrade – What & Why
 What
 Enable upgrade at scale with minimal to no interruption of service with
scheduling capabilities, notification of customers as well as re-scheduling
capabilities while not exhausting SQL in the process. In all ensure that we
have a scalable upgrade story that is manageable with least possible
customer impact.
 Why
 The continuous effort to improve repeatability built on top of Shared
database – and at the same time strive for minimal customer downtime.

58. Development Environments

59. Development Environments Comparison
OLD Development
Environment
NEW Development
Environment
C/SIDE
+
C/AL
VS Code
+
AL
Object
Designer
.FOB
.TXT
C/SIDE
VS Code Editor
.APP
Powershell /
VS Code

60. VS Code+AL = New Development Environment
VS Code (Visual Studio Code)
CODE.EXE > Show Projects > Objects: Files
AL
AL Extension for VS Code > Show Business Logic > Code:
text inside “.AL” file
http://aka.ms/navdeveloperpreview
https://code.visualstudio.com/

61. VS Code: Open Source, Cross Platform, Git
“VS Code: Open source, cross-platform, multi-language
development environment that puts writing code at its center”
https://code.visualstudio.com/

62. AL Language extension
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics-nav/developer/devenv-programming-in-al
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics-nav/developer/devenv-dev-overview
https://robertostefanettinavblog.com/2016/11/29/microsoft-al-al-language-code-samples-for-developing-extensions/

63. C/SIDE Vs VS Code
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics-nav/developer/devenv-reference-overview
Differences in the Development Environments C/SIDE Vs AL Development Env (VS Code)
Coming from the Dynamics NAV Development Environment and C/SIDE, there are some
differences and optimizations that you should familiarize yourself with. The following
sections go through these changes.
C/SIDE VS Code
Keyword Uppercase Keyword Lowercase
.NET Support Native Web Services Types
Object Designer Real-time compiling
Symbol Menu Option Member
File Support File Upload from Stream
Translations in Objects Where Used

64. Object Designer VS Vs Code Editor - Face
Object Designer VS Code Editor
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics-nav/developer/devenv-reference-overview
https://github.com/Microsoft/AL

65. AL - Details
AL https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=ms-dynamics-smb.al
Formatting, syntax highlighting and rich IntelliSense
Support for and snippets to define Codeunits, Pages, Page Extensions, Tables, Table Extensions,
XMLPorts, and Reports
Support for reference by symbols (Shift+F12) to jump to all instances of a specific symbol
Added support for using HTTP and JSON types to access Azure functions and other Web Services
Ability to define a dependency on another extension by listing it in the app.json configuration file
Autogeneration of app.json and launch.json project files

66. .FOB Vs .APP
Differences between .FOB and .APP Files
.FOB Files .APP Files
PACKAGE: “.FOB” : Financials Objects, standard old
objects package
PACKAGE: “.APP”: Based on Extensions (v. 2.0 - Vs Code)
 .al file, app.json, launch.json
Source code visible in C/SIDE NO
Include standard Objects and standard Code can be
changed
NO
Imported in NAV : C/SIDE Powershell, VS Code
Extensions of standard objects and include additional
business logic for solutions

67. “Vs Code” face

68. RobertoStefanetti,
MVP BusinessSolutions– NAV &BC
@robstefane