Business Central 2019 release wave 2 – Modern clients features

With release of Dynamics 365 Business Central release wave 2 Public preview, so many new list of features are planned to release from October 2019 through March 2020.

Below is the list of areas for which new and planned features are:

• Application enhancements
• Application lifecycle management
• Empower ISV acceleration
• Migrations to Business Central online
• Modern clients
• Modern developer tools
• Service fundamentals

In this blog post, we will see about below listed Modern clients features in detail.

• resizing columns with fewer clicks
• saving and personalizing views
• personalizing or designing role center actions
• personalizing or designing the navigation bar
• adding links to your navigation menu
• adding notes and links
• adding and customizing roles
• the Role explorer, formerly known as the Product overview
• improved speed and agility of data entry
• improved filtering on report request pages, FilterPageBuilder and RunRequestPage
• switching between companies in your Business Inbox in Outlook
• enhancements to Excel integration
• application keyboard shortcuts
• general user experience adjustments
• more power to developers using the Designer
• the all new company badge (replacing the system indicator).

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.

Add notes and links to data

You can add internal notes to business data that is captured and processed in Business Central online. Notes are shown next to the card data, and you can add, edit, and delete notes. You can also insert hyperlinks to online content to card pages, opening up even more advanced scenarios.

•  The tabbed Factbox area on list and card pages has now the Attachment section that includes fact boxes related to notes, links and documents attachments
• A counter shows you all notes + links + document attachments associated with the given record
•  Notes are multiline and Enter is preserved
• The active keyboard shortcut, Alt+O, allows you to quickly add a new note from wherever you are on the page (even when the notes factbox is not in focus)

Easy access to a capability overview

Finding functionality becomes easier with a full overview of pages in the product based on the content of the various Role Centers. This makes it much easier for users to navigate and find the right page, and it serves as an overview of Role Centers and their content. As a supplement to using the current Role Centers navigation bar, the command bar, or Tell Me, this new capability overview brings the different areas of Business Central closer to you so that you can stay focused and productive.

Enhancements to Excel integration

When the user selects the Edit in Excel action from a list page, most filters set on the list page are applied to the list when it is exported to Excel. This also enables publishing changes back into Business Central from a filtered list of records in Excel. Additionally, the number of fields available for reading and publishing edits from Excel is expanded. This includes being able to view and edit fields that are added to pages through extensions.

Full keyboard shortcut support

Developers can add keyboard shortcuts to most actions and operations via an AL property. This means that application developers can specify keyboard shortcuts for actions in the base application and their own objects from their extensions. This complements the predefined list of keyboard shortcuts in Business Central and enables more flexible development for partners.

General user experience adjustments

Continuing our familiar look and feel across Dynamics 365 and Office 365, this update includes the addition of more fluent design elements on rows and bricks, button styling, and minor stylistic changes to captions on parts. Stylistic changes to bricks also make it easier to select an individual brick, allowing users to display related FactBoxes as well as use the Ctrl+C keyboard shortcut to copy the brick.

Role Centers no longer automatically separate root-level actions from action groups. The sequence in which they were defined in code is respected and reflected in the client for each action area.

Below you can see different images of BC15 and BC14.

Longer timeout period for the server connection

In earlier versions of Business Central online, the session timeout period is set to 20 minutes. We will increase this value to hours so that users are not asked to sign in to Business Central again and again.

Modern clients only for Business Central

Business Central continues to evolve the modern client experiences where users work with Business Central in the browser, Windows 10 desktop app, or mobile apps on Android and iOS. With this release of Business Central on-premises, the legacy Dynamics NAV Windows client is no longer available for deployment. Instead, users can switch to the modern experience in the browser, the Android/iOS mobile apps, or the Windows 10 desktop app (available through the respective stores).

Personalize actions and navigation on your Role Center

Personalizing the navigation menu includes:

• Moving menu links to another position within the same group or a different group or subgroup.
• Moving menu groups to another position.
• Hiding menu links 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.

As with all other personalization, the changes are effective immediately and roam with the user, no matter which device they sign in to.

Powerful filtering for reports

When running a report in Business Central, users are presented with a request page where they can specify various options and filters. The filter experience has been greatly improved with an experience similar to filtering lists, which includes the ability to quickly add more fields, get assistance and validation feedback when specifying filter criteria, and apply expressions and filter tokens.

Similar features to list filter pane

• Add (and remove) as many fields as you like
• Pick fields or search as you type
• Apply filter expressions from our catalogue of powerful keywords and filter criteria

Available for

• Report request pages
• Window from RunRequestPage
• Window from FilterPageBuilder
• XMLPorts request pages

Below you can see different images of BC15 and BC14.

Resize columns with fewer clicks

Adjusting the width of any column just got easier. Even though you can resize columns on any list at any time, your changes roam with you no matter which device you sign in to.

• Resize a column by simply deagging it
• Double-click to AutoFit
• No need to start Personalizing
• Applies to any type of list
• Roams with you no matter the device you sign into

Saving and personalizing list views

Users will be able to save their list filters and similar personalizations to create different ways of slicing their data. List views are given a name, such as “Items I sell”, and might include:

• Filters on totals and dimensions.
• Filter tokens (such as %MyCustomers) to dynamically filter to the right data.
• Different sorting to allow more complex and tailored views of a list.

Users can quickly switch between different views of a list, which includes their own personal views or views that come as standard in their business application, in apps, or for their role.

Similar to other personalizations, list views roam with the user no matter which device or browser they sign in to.

Switch between companies in your Business Inbox in Outlook

Use the new action in the Business Inbox in Outlook to switch the Business Central company context

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 UI customizations for groups of users that share the same user profile. This can be done entirely without the use of Visual Studio Code and AL. Capabilities include:

• Add, edit, or remove user profiles from within Business Central.
• Get a more detailed overview of your profiles and focus on one of them to begin customizing it.
• Leverage all the rich capabilities of the designer to make lightweight UI customization of that profile and test your customization while you design.

Customization of user profiles does not secure access to objects or data. Administrators are still required to apply the relevant user groups or permissions sets.

Filtering option fields by multiple values

Option fields are essentially enumerations with predefined values. Until now, users have been able to choose only a single value when they set a filter in option fields. With this wave, we introduce a new multi-selection control so that users can filter by multiple values. This is treated as an OR operation. For example, you can filter the Color field by red, green, or blue. Multi-selection of values is available only when filtering, not when specifying the field value on the record.

Multitasking across multiple pages

Business Central allows users to open a second page in another tab or window, allowing them to do multiple tasks at the same time while working with the same company. In the same way, users can easily work with multiple companies by having multiple windows open, and the new, colorful company badge indicator (formerly known as system indicator) helps them figure out which window represents a given company.

The company badge is a 4 characters abbreviation of the company name, and it helps users identify faster the company they are currently working in.

Speed and agility of data entry

Business Central greatly accelerates repetitive data entry in lists through a combination of productivity features, raw performance, and a responsive experience.

Stay tuned for more updated on Business Central 2019 release wave 2 Public preview…

You can create Docker images of Business Central 2019 Wave 2 preview on bcinsider and try out the features. Refer below links for how to get those images and create docker container.

https://saurav-nav.blogspot.com/2019/08/how-to-setup-business-central-2019.html

More details about Business Central 2019 release wave 2 available here : https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365-release-plan/2019wave2/dynamics365-business-central/

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