October Updates for Business Central

Microsoft has announced the October release, now being called the “2019 Wave 2” release, and here we take a look at some of the highlight points. As with any update, there is a huge amount of information, with a lot of the releases featuring technical information that effects developers dealing with the back end of the systems. In this article we will look at the updates that effect the end users, and discuss the future of the product.

The death of the Windows Client

One of the biggest changes with the October release is that there will be no Windows Client (more properly the Dynamics NAV Client connected to Business Central) – a bold step as this is currently the client of choice for on premise deployments. Moving forward, the new look will be available through the web client, table and mobile apps and on a Windows 10 app. Microsoft has stated that they are heavily investing in the web client, with a lot of the improvements to the product being around its operation.

Some people have been a little reserved about the new look web-obnly-client, however the rate of development that is coming with the new technologies is making it an extremely exciting time for Business Central.

In-Depth Highlights

The focus for Wave 2 is improvement to service (performance, reliability etc), improvements to the Modern Client (Web and tablet only) and modern developer tools. Here we will look at some of the highlight updates.

Multiple environments and countries

Previously, the company setup and localisation for SAAS would be determined by the tenant. For example, if a group managed Office 365 across all of the companies in one tenant, it would have been impossible to have different companies set up on different localisations worldwide.

Now, one tenant can have multiple companies set up on different localisations. It is also easy to move between companies. If you are using the Outlook integration and need to switch between companies on the BC actions this is also a quick and easy task.

Carry line descriptions to general ledger entries when posting

When reconciling or auditing data such as expenses, it is useful to see the source document line description in the general ledger entries.

From the General Ledger Setup page, you can choose the Source Description Posting Setup action to define for sales, purchase, and service documents whether the line description text is carried to the resulting item ledger entries depending on the line type. Note that when you select to copy source line descriptions to the resulting entries, such G/L entries will also be grouped per document line.

Add links to your navigation menu

Bookmark a link to any page in Business Central and add the link to the navigation menu of your Home page.

Customize a user profile without writing code

Formerly known as profile configuration mode in the Dynamics NAV Windows client, the Business Central desktop experience allows lightweight User Interface (UI) customizations for groups of users that share the same user profile.

Personalize actions and navigation on your Home page

Personalizing the navigation menu includes:

• Moving menu items to another position within the same or a different group.
• Moving menu item groups to another position.
• Hiding menu items or entire groups.
• Clearing your personalization, effectively returning the Role Center to its original navigation menu layout.

Personalizing Role Center actions includes:

• Moving actions to another position within the same or different group.
• Moving action groups to another position.
• Hiding actions or entire groups of actions.
• Clearing action personalization, effectively returning the Role Center to its original action layout.

List View Improvements

It is now easier to resize columns, with the added benefits that the changes roam with any device. That is to say, if you change a column width on the web client, the changes will appear on tablet clients.

Lists can now be personalised with filters, and those views saved. Previously, these rules would have to be saved against the navigation pane. Now, with the new client layout, the list views are saved as options against the original list, making it easy to switch between them.

Notes and Links

Notes and Links have been missing from some of the versions of Business Central, especially SAAS. In the October release, this functionality is now coming to all versions of Business Central.  

Departments screen replacement

In Dynamics NAV, many people found the departments screen extremely useful, as it gives an overview of the whole application. Microsoft have listened to the requests, and are brining a new version of the departments screen to the Business Central product.

Your Input

It is worth noting that a lot of the updates that have been implemented were suggested by the community. If you would like to have your say, vote for the features that you want, or even add your own ideas here:

https://aka.ms/BCideas 

The Microsoft Landscape

As the Microsoft business product landscape evolves, the applications are becoming further intertwined. There are a wide range of updates, for which we wanted to highlight just a few.  

PowerApps Portal

As part of this feature, PowerApps and Dynamics 365 makers can create a new type of app called Portal to create a website that can be extended to users who are outside your organization and can sign in with a wide variety of identities, or even browse the content anonymously.

This feature will provide the full capabilities of Dynamics 365 for Customer Engagement Portal, previously offered only as an add-on to Dynamics 365 for Customer Engagement applications. It also features a revamped end-to-end experience for makers to quickly create a website, customize it with pages, layout, and content, reuse page design through templates, add forms, views, and other key data from Common Data Service, and publish to users. With these new capabilities, makers can deliver rich web-based experiences to users far beyond their fellow employees, unlocking a host of business scenarios for employees, business to business (B2B) partners, and end customers.

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Microsoft’s big push is AI, across the products and even with stand-alone AI solutions. The future technologies will very much focus on AI with bots as the interface.

Power BI

There are a lot of updates in PowerBI, Including ones in line with the AI and bots advancements. As you will have seen from our AI blog, soon to be released will be adding reports and dashboards to Siri. Users will be able to say “Hey Siri, show me X report” to gain quick access to key metrics.

There is also an exciting new look with a vast array of visuals.

The Full Release Notes

If you are interested in all of the new features and functionality coming with the October release, or 2019 Wave 2, please have a look at the full Microsoft Document.

Microsoft October Release Notes

If you are on an older version and would like to upgrade to get all of the features on offer, please contact our friendly team for more information.

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