Let’s talk Data Efficiency in Business Central

Hi Everyone,

Performance speed isn’t the only factor that determines Business Central’s pleasant user experience

Business Central provides numerous features that increase data efficiency when exploring, navigating, and entering data

Key factors for data efficiency:

• Keyboard Shortcuts
• Focusing on lists
• Quick Entry
• Finding Pages and information with Tell Me
• Finding Pages and Reports with the Role Explorer
• Optimize your workspace for data entry
• Entering or editing using Microsoft Excel

1. Keyboard Shortcuts – Keyboard shortcuts aid accessibility and can make it easier and more efficient to navigate to different areas and elements on a page. They’re supported by most web browsers
2. Focusing on lists – When data is viewed in a list page, we can simply use the Focus on and off to switch your view to focus only on the line items. To focus on lines items, select anywhere in the line-item part, and then choose Focus Mode icon. in the upper right corner or press Ctrl+Shift+F12.
   To switch back to the normal view, choose Focus Mode icon. or press Ctrl+Shift+F12 again.
3. Quick Entry – Accelerate your data entry using Quick Entry. With Quick Entry, you use the Enter key to navigate through only those fields that you’re interested in. Quick Entry skips non-editable fields and fields that you typically don’t fill in.
   You can customize Quick Entry by personalizing your workspace and optimizing how you enter data on each page.
4. Finding Pages and information with Tell Me – Tell Me can help you quickly go to things like actions, pages, or reports, find information about how to complete a particular task, and discover additional apps and consulting services for Business Central
5. Finding Pages and Reports with the Role Explorer – Each element on the role explorer is an action that opens a page. Accordingly, you can also use the role explorer to navigate in Business Central. On your Role Centre or any list page, choose the button to the right of the navigation bar, or press Shift+F12.
6. Optimize your workspace for data entry – You can personalize your workspace to suit your work and preferences. Change pages so that they display only the information you need, where you need it. The personalization changes will only affect what you see, not what other users see.
7. Entering or editing using Microsoft Excel – With pages that display a list of records in rows and columns, like a list of customers, sale orders, or invoices, you can export the list to Microsoft Excel, and view it there. Depending on the page, you have two options for viewing in Excel. Both options are available from the Share icon at the top of a page. You can either select the Open in Excel action or the Edit in Excel action on the page

Data which loads faster…

Business Central has numerous mechanisms that make the user interface more responsive and help pages load faster.

Caching for Data Efficiency!!

The overall structure of a page (but not business data) is cached on the client device when a page is accessed the first time. The next time that same page is accessed, the layout of the page will be immediately displayed, while the latest data is fetched from the Business Central service.