Mastering Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central

By : Stefano Demiliani, Tacconi

4 (2)

Buy this Book

Mastering Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central

4 (2)

By: Stefano Demiliani, Tacconi

Buy this Book

Overview of this book

Dynamics 365 Business Central is an all-in-one business management solution, which is easy to adopt and helps you make smarter business decisions. This book is a comprehensive guide to developing solutions with Microsoft ERP (in the cloud and also on-premises). It covers all aspects of developing extensions, right from preparing a sandbox environment to deploying a complete solution. The book starts by introducing you to the Dynamics 365 Business Central platform and the new Modern Development Environment. You'll then explore the sandbox concept, and see how to create sandboxes for development. As you advance, you’ll be able to build a complete advanced solution for Dynamics 365 Business Central with AL language and Visual Studio Code. You'll then learn how to debug and deploy the extension and write automatic testing. The book will also take you through advanced topics like integration (with Azure Functions, web services, and APIs), DevOps and CI/CD techniques, and machine learning. You'll discover how Dynamics 365 Business Central can be used with Office 365 apps. Finally, you'll analyze different ways to move existing solutions to the new development model based on extensions. By the end of this book, you'll be able to develop highly customized solutions that meet the requirements of modern businesses using Dynamics 365 Business Central.

Preface

Who this book is for

What this book covers

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Free Chapter

Section 1: Dynamics 365 Business Central - Platform Overview and the Basics of Modern Development

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central Overview

Understanding the customer perspective

Understanding the partner's perspective

Under the skin of Dynamics 365 Business Central

Understanding the future perspective

Summary

Mastering a Modern Development Environment

Mastering Visual Studio Code

Visual Studio Code – the editing features

Understanding the AL Language extension

Understanding symbols

Understanding AL Language extension configuration

Mastering AL Language code snippets

Summary

Online and Container-Based Sandboxes

Creating online sandboxes

Introducing Docker

Locally available environments using pure Docker commands

Connecting to an existing SQL Server

Handling your running containers with Docker cmdlets

Creating locally available environments using navcontainerhelper

Pulling new image versions

Handling your running containers with NavContainerHelper

Centrally available on-premise environments

Containers hosted on Azure VMs

Choosing the right image

Summary

Section 2: Developing Extensions for Dynamics 365 Business Central

Extension Development Fundamentals

Technical requirements

Basic concepts regarding extensions

Understanding the basics of the AL Language

Understanding AL project structure best practices

Naming guidelines and AL object ranges

Working on AL coding guidelines

Summary

Developing a Customized Solution for Dynamics 365 Business Central

Translating a business case into a real-world extension

Understanding a dependent extension

Summary

Advanced AL Development

Understanding immutable keys

Handling files with AL

Handling attachments

Reading and writing text data to and from BLOB fields

Using XMLports in AL code

Creating and extending Role Centers

Handling XML and JSON files with the AL language

Consuming web services and APIs from AL

Publishing Dynamics 365 Business Central objects as web services from AL

Using Azure Functions to replace .NET code

Understanding Isolated Storage

Working with control add-ins

Notifications inside Dynamics 365 Business Central

Understanding page background tasks

Summary

Report Development with AL

Anatomy of the AL report object

Tools to use for Word and RDL layouts

Converting an existing C/AL report into AL

Feature limitation when developing an RDL or Word layout report

Understanding report performance considerations

Summary

Section 3: Debugging, Testing, and Release Management (DevOps)

Installing and Upgrading Extensions

Deploying extensions

Deploying the main extension

Deploying a new version of the main extension

Summary

Debugging

Running in debug mode

Understanding code analyzers

Understanding Event Recorder

Summary

Automated Test Development with AL

Test automation and testing design principles

Designing tests with ATDD

Preparing the environment

Setting up test development for extensions

Learning about the technique behind test code

Designing our test scenarios

Implementing our test scenarios

Summary

Source Control Management and DevOps with Business Central

Understanding Azure DevOps and what it offers

Managing tasks, sprints, and boards in Azure DevOps

Creating a repository for your code

Managing repositories

Branching policies

Branching strategies

Understanding Git merge strategies

Exploring Git with Visual Studio Code

Understanding Azure DevOps Pipelines

Understanding the YAML pipeline

Summary

Section 4: Advanced Integrations with Dynamics 365 Business Central

Dynamics 365 Business Central APIs

Comparing OData and APIs in Dynamics 365 Business Central

Using Dynamics 365 Business Central standard APIs

Creating a custom API in Dynamics 365 Business Central

Creating an application that uses Dynamics 365 Business Central APIs

Using bound actions

Using Dynamics 365 Business Central webhooks

Working with Dynamics 365 Business Central APIs in Microsoft Graph

Automation APIs in Dynamics 365 Business Central

Summary

Serverless Business Processes with Business Central and Azure

Technical requirements

Overview of Microsoft Azure serverless services

Getting an overview of Azure Functions

Developing an Azure function with Visual Studio

Developing an Azure function with Visual Studio Code

Calling an Azure function from AL

Interacting with Azure Blob Storage to handle files in the cloud

Summary

Monitoring, Scaling, and CI/CD with Azure Functions

Technical requirements

Monitoring Azure Functions

Scaling Azure Functions

Summary

Business Central and Integration with the Power Platform

Technical requirements

Introducing the Power Platform

Understanding Flow

Understanding PowerApps

Integration scenarios with Power Platform

Summary

Section 5: Moving Solutions to the New Extension Model

Integrating Machine Learning into Dynamics 365 Business Central

What are AI and ML?

An overview of the ML process

Understanding the Business Central ML Framework

Understanding the ML Prediction API

Summary

Moving Existing ISV Solutions to the New Extension Model

Preparing the transition from C/AL to AL and extensions

Planning the number of extensions to code

Converting existing solutions into AL

Handling customer-specific personalization's

Other things to remember

Dynamics 365 Business Central wave 2 release changes

Summary

Useful and Proficient Tools for AL Developers

Who is Waldo?

What tools to use

Summary

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Understanding the AL Language extension

AL is now a cross-platform language that is deployed through an extension for Visual Studio Code. This extension not only supports deployment on Windows OSes, but is also supported for the macOS version of Visual Studio Code.

The free AL Language extension (https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=ms-dynamics-smb.al) is available for download from the Visual Studio Code marketplace. This provides an optimized experience for Dynamics 365 Business Central extension development, and includes all the support and tools that you need to build apps (from now on, a synonym for extension), including the debugger.

The easiest way to get the extension installed without further information is by opening any Dynamics 365 Business Central code file (.al) and following the instructions shown by Visual Studio Code when it detects that an extension...