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  • Book Overview & Buying Mastering Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central
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Mastering Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central

Mastering Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central

By : Stefano Demiliani, Tacconi
4.9 (17)
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Mastering Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central

Mastering Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central

4.9 (17)
By: Stefano Demiliani, Tacconi
Buy this Book

Overview of this book

This book dives straight into guiding you through the process of building real-world solutions with the AL language and Visual Studio Code. It emphasizes best practices and extensibility patterns to ensure your extensions are well-structured, maintainable, and meet the needs of modern businesses. You'll learn advanced AL techniques, report creation methods, debugging strategies, and how to leverage telemetries for monitoring. Additionally, it covers performance optimization practices and API integration to help you create efficient and interconnected solutions. With a focus on extension development, this new edition allows you to jump right into coding without spending time on setup processes. This book introduces new chapters covering essential tasks that Business Central developers frequently encounter, such as file handling and printing management. Finally, the book expands its scope by including chapters on various integration aspects, including VS Code extensions, GitHub DevOps, Azure services, and Power Platform integrations. We’ll wrap up by covering Copilot capabilities in Business Central and how you can create your own generative AI copilots. By mastering these concepts and techniques, you'll be well-equipped to create powerful and customized solutions that extend the capabilities of Dynamics 365 Business Central.
Table of Contents (21 chapters)
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Preface
Preface
Who this book is for
What this book covers
To get the most out of this book
Get in touch
1
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central’s Online Momentum
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central’s Online Momentum
Dynamics 365 Business Central’s evolution
The Universal Code initiative
The role of open source and social networks
The future perspective
Summary
Free Chapter
2
Mastering a Modern Development Environment
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Mastering a Modern Development Environment
The Visual Studio Code user interface
Visual Studio Code – the editing features
Understanding the AL Language extension
Understanding code analyzers
GitHub Copilot for AL developers
Summary
3
Extension Development Fundamentals
Extension Development Fundamentals
Technical requirements
Basic concepts regarding extensions
Understanding the basics of AL
Understanding AL project structure best practices
Naming guidelines and AL object ranges
Working on AL coding guidelines
Summary
4
Developing a Customized Solution for Dynamics 365 Business Central
Developing a Customized Solution for Dynamics 365 Business Central
Translating a business case into a real-world extension
Promoting actions
Creating page views
Installing and upgrading codeunits
Defining permission sets in AL
Summary
5
Writing Code for Extensibility
Writing Code for Extensibility
Why do we need extensible code?
Business scenario
Events and the “Handled” pattern
Writing a dependent extension
Interfaces in AL
Extension’s code protection
Summary
6
Advanced AL Development
Advanced AL Development
Understanding immutable keys
Access modifiers in AL
Handling errors with TryFunctions
Using collectible errors
Handling actions on errors
Creating and extending role centers
Handling XML and JSON files with the AL language
Understanding Isolated Storage
Working with control add-ins
Notifications inside Dynamics 365 Business Central
Understanding page background tasks
Using Azure Key Vault in AL extensions
Namespaces in AL language
Summary
7
Handling Files with Dynamics 365 Business Central
Handling Files with Dynamics 365 Business Central
Handling files with AL
Using persistent blobs
Isolated Storage
Using Azure Blob Storage from AL
Using Azure file shares from AL
Summary
8
Report Development
Report Development
Anatomy of the report object
The report extension object
Tools to use for RDL, Word, and Excel layouts
Report extension object: a basic example
Cloning and refactoring reports
Feature limitations when developing RDL or Word layout document reports
Understanding report performance considerations
Summary
9
Printing
Printing
Understand cloud-ready printing
Email printers
Microsoft Universal Print printers
Deep dive into the modern printing structure
Alternatives to Microsoft Universal Print
Summary
10
Debugging
Debugging
Running in debug mode
Visual Studio Code debugger sections
Snapshot debugging
Performance profiling
Summary
11
Telemetry
Telemetry
Signal fundamentals
Enabling partner telemetry in Dynamics 365 Business Central online
KQL log analysis
Application Insights
Tools to analyze telemetry data
Power BI telemetry apps
Custom signals
Summary
12
Coding for Performance
Coding for Performance
Defining an efficient data access layer
Events and performance
Running asynchronous patterns
Testing and validating performances
Summary
13
Dynamics 365 Business Central APIs
Dynamics 365 Business Central APIs
Using the OData protocol for APIs
Configuring OAuth authentication for Dynamics 365 Business Central APIs
Acquiring an authentication token from Microsoft Entra ID
Using Dynamics 365 Business Central standard APIs
Creating a custom API in Dynamics 365 Business Central
Using OData bound actions
Using OData unbound actions
Using Dynamics 365 Business Central webhooks
Summary
14
Extending Dynamics 365 Business Central with Azure Services
Extending Dynamics 365 Business Central with Azure Services
Overview of Azure Functions
Creating functions with Azure Functions
Using Azure Functions from AL
Overview of Azure Logic Apps
Creating workflows with Azure Logic Apps
Summary
15
DevOps for Dynamics 365 Business Central
DevOps for Dynamics 365 Business Central
AL-Go for GitHub: an introduction
Creating a new per-tenant extension with AL-Go for GitHub
Branching strategies
Git merge strategies
Git in Visual Studio Code
Handling the CI/CD pipeline
Setting up your self-hosted GitHub runner
Handling dependencies between applications
Adding a test application to an existing project
Registering a customer sandbox environment for continuous deployment
Creating a release for your application
Registering a customer Production environment for manual deployment
Adding a performance test app to your repository
Using AL-Go for GitHub for AppSource development
Summary
16
Dynamics 365 Business Central and Power Platform Integration
Dynamics 365 Business Central and Power Platform Integration
Technical requirements
Power Automate and Dynamics 365 Business Central
Creating a Power Apps app with Dynamics 365 Business Central integration
Exposing Dynamics 365 Business Central data to Dataverse by using virtual tables
Exposing Dynamics 365 Business Central events to Dataverse
Summary
17
Useful and Proficient Tools for AL Developers
Useful and Proficient Tools for AL Developers
Who is Waldo?
What tools to use
Summary
18
Creating Generative AI Solutions for Dynamics 365 Business Central
Creating Generative AI Solutions for Dynamics 365 Business Central
Introduction to generative AI main concepts
Introducing Azure OpenAI Service
Dynamics 365 Business Central and Azure OpenAI Service
Deploy an AI model with Azure OpenAI Service
Creating a generative AI solution for Dynamics 365 Business Central
Summary
19
Other Books You May Enjoy
Other Books You May Enjoy
20
Index
Index

Mastering a Modern Development Environment

In the previous chapter, we introduced Dynamics 365 Business Central and the amazing momentum that its online version is enjoying.

In this chapter, we will take a close look at the development environment. We will discuss the main shortcuts, tips, and tricks related to Visual Studio Code, the official development platform, and the AL Language extension, the development language extension. The union between Visual Studio Code and AL defines the so-called modern development environment.

AL Language is the official Visual Studio Code extension provided by Microsoft, free of charge, through the online marketplace. AL stands for Application Language, although it’s typically referred to as AL Language. Officially released for the first time back in 2017 to extend what was then called Dynamics 365 for Financials (formerly Project Madeira), it is now a solid, fully fledged development language that extends Dynamics 365 Business Central. It comes equipped with a lot of features that greatly enhance developers’ productivity and coding quality.

The main goal of this chapter is to help Dynamics 365 Business Central developers understand what the development platform offers, unleash their potential, and become proficient in their daily coding activities.

In this chapter, you will learn about the following:

  • What the Visual Studio Code user interface is composed of, and the purpose of each section
  • How to be proficient in using the most powerful Visual Studio Code editing features
  • What the AL Language extension is and what it consists of
  • Turning on code analyzers to check and enforce encoding rules
  • Enabling GitHub Copilot to accelerate the writing of code
End of Section 1
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